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A, 






POETRY & LIFE 


MATTHEW ARNOLD 
& HIS POETRY 


POETRY & LIFE SERIES 

Gtntral Editor ; 

WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON 

Staff-Lecturer in Literature to the 
University Extension Board of the 
University of London 

KEATS AND HIS POETRY 

By William Henry Hndson 

GRAY AND HIS POETRY 

By William Henry Hudson 

SHELLEY AND HIS POETRY 

By E. W. Edmunds, M.A. 

COLERIDGE AND HIS POETRY 

By Kathleen E. Royds 

MATTHEW ARNOLD AND HIS 
POETRY By Francis Bickley 

BURNS AND HIS POETRY 

By H. A. Kellow, M.A. 
Other Volumee in active preparation 






















I 
























































































MATTHEW 
ARNOLD & 
HIS POETRY 

BY 

FRANCIS BICKLEY 



NEW YORK: DODGE 
PUBLISHING COMPANY 

214-220 EAST TWENTY-THIRD ST 


-p'R 4-0 ^ 4 

3 ^ 


TO NORA 



* < 

V t 

< c \ 


Printed in Great Britain 


GENERAL PREFACE 

A GLANCE through the pages of this little 
book will suffice to disclose the general 
plan of the series of which it forms a 
part. Only a few words of explanation, there¬ 
fore, will be necessary. 

The point of departure is the undeniable fact 
that with the vast majority of young students 
of literature a living interest in the work of any 
poet can best be aroused, and an intelligent 
appreciation of it secured, when it is immediately 
associated with the character and career of the 
poet himself. The cases are indeed few and far 
between in which much fresh light will not be 
thrown upon a poem by some knowledge of the 
personality of the writer, while it will often be 
found that the most direct—perhaps even the 
only—way to the heart of its meaning lies 
through a consideration of the circumstances 
in which it had its birth. The purely aesthetic 
critic may possibly object that a poem should 
be regarded simply as a self-contained and 
detached piece of art, having no personal 
affiliations or bearings. Of the validity of this 
as an abstract principle nothing need now be 
said. The fact remains that, in the earlier 
stages of study at any rate, poetry is most valued 
and loved when it is made to seem most human 
and vital ; and the human and vital interest 
of poetry can be most surely brought home 
to the reader by the biographical method of 
interpretation. 


5 


GENERAL PREFACE 

This is to some extent recognised by writers 
of histories and text-books of literature, and by 
editors of selections from the works of our 
poets ; for place is always given by them to a 
certain amount of biographical material. But 
in the histories and text-books the biography of 
a given writer stands by itself, and his work 
has to be sought elsewhere, the student being 
left to make the connection for himself ; while 
even in our current editions of selections there 
is little systematic attempt to link biography, 
step by step, with production. 

This brings us at once to the chief purpose 
of the present series. In this, biography and 
production will be considered together and 
in intimate association. In other words, an 
endeavour will be made to interest the reader 
in the lives and personalities of the poets dealt 
with, and at the same time to use biography as 
an introduction and key to their writings. 

Each volume will therefore contain the life- 
story of the poet who forms its subject. In this, 
attention will be specially directed to his per¬ 
sonality as it expressed itself in his poetry, and 
to the influences and conditions which counted 
most as formative factors in the growth of his 
genius. This biographical study will be used 
as a setting for a selection, as large as space 
will permit, of his representative poems. Such 
poems, where possible, will be reproduced in 
full, and care will be taken to bring out their 
connection with his character, his circumstances, 
and the movement of his mind. Then, in 


GENERAL PREFACE 

addition, so much more general literary criti¬ 
cism will be incorporated as may seem to be 
needed to supplement the biographical material, 
and to exhibit both the essential qualities and 
the historical importance of his work. 

It is believed that the plan thus pursued is 
substantially in the nature of a new departure, 
and that the volumes of this series, constituting 
as they will an introduction to the study of 
some of our greatest poets, will be found useful 
to teachers and students of literature, and no 
less to the general lover of English poetry. 

WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON 


7 




s 



POEMS QUOTED IN 
WHOLE OR IN PART 

PAGE 

Rugby Chapel 12 

The Scholar Gipsy 15 

Thyrsis 24 

Sonnet : To a Friend 33 

Sonnet : Youth’s Agitations 35 

Longing 37 

The Buried Life 38 

Self-Dependence 43 

Morality 44 

Sonnet : Quiet Work 47 

Resignation 48 

The Strayed Reveller 51 

Sonnet : To a Republican Friend 62 

Sonnet : Shakespeare 65 

Mycerinus 66 

The Forsaken Merman 71 

Empedocles on Etna 76 

Tristram and Iseult 83 

Dover Beach 101 

Pis-aller 107 

Requiescat 113 

Philomela 115 


9 












MATTHEW ARNOLD 
AND HIS POETRY 



DUCATIONALIST and celebrant of Eng¬ 


land’s river as he was destined to 


JL—^ become, it seems apt that Matthew 
Arnold should have been born at Lale- 
ham in the Thames valley, the eldest son of 
Arnold of Rugby. On Christmas Eve 1822, 
however, when the third of the Victorian poets 
came into the world, Thomas Arnold had not 
yet been appointed to the headmastership which 
was to bring so much honour t himself and so 
much profit to the school he ruled. He was still 
teaching private pupils in the quiet riverside 
village where two years previously he had 
brought his wife, Mary Penrose, the clever 
woman whose sympathy with her brilliant son 
was so close, enduring and, one may conjecture, 
inspiring. 

Doctor Arnold went to Rugby in 1828, when 
Matthew was five, but two years later the little 
boy returned to Laleham, where he remained 
at the house of his uncle, the Rev. John Buck- 
land, until he was sent to Winchester in 
1836. A loyal Wykehamist, Dr. Arnold wished 
his son to come in contact with the traditions 
of the great school. In the following year, how¬ 
ever, he altered his intentions and brought 
Matthew to Rugby, where the rest of his school¬ 
days was spent. 


11 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Thus, in the school-house at Rugby or in the 
holiday home near Grasmere—Wordsworth’s 
country—Matthew Arnold grew up under the 
eye of his father. Temperamentally the two 
were poles asunder—Thomas stern, puritanical, 
utterly lacking in the sense of humour ; Matthew 
gay, sceptical, not guiltless of flippancy. Yet 
a deep affection seems to have subsisted between 
them, and the poet always held the memory of 
his father, whom he lost before he was twenty, 
in the greatest reverence. In later life he might, 
for the sake of argument, suggest, in his airy 
way, that “ Dear Doctor Arnold was not infal¬ 
lible ” ; but his references to “ Papa ” in his 
letters to his mother and sisters are always 
in a spirit of devotion, and it gave him 
genuine pleasure to hear that the names of 
Thomas and Matthew Arnold had been coupled 
as equivalents. In his poem ** Rugby Chapel,” 
written in November 1857, he paid a pious and 
noble tribute to the great headmaster, who had 
died fifteen years before : 

Fifteen years have gone round 
Since thou arosest to tread, 

In the summer-morning, the road 
Of death, at a call unforeseen, 

Sudden. For fifteen years, 

We who till then in thy shade 
Rested as under the boughs 
Of a mighty oak, have endured 
Sunshine and rain as we might, 

Bare, unshaded, alone, 

Lacking the shelter of thee. 


12 


ARNOLD HIS POETRY 

Of the sincerity of this, or of the eulogy which 
it preludes, there can be no doubt. Matthew 
Arnold’s relations with his family were, indeed, 
strikingly harmonious and happy. The sympathy 
between him and his mother has already been 
referred to. With his eldest sister, the wife of 
W. E. Forster, author of the Endowed Schools 
Bill, his friendship was as deep. Of his published 
letters, those to “ K.,” as he always called her, 
are among the most intimate. “ Perhaps,” he 
wrote in 1861, she “ has even now the first 
place in my heart as the judge of my poems.” 
Higher tribute than that could no poet offer. 
The chances of life, perhaps, made it more diffi¬ 
cult for him to keep in close touch with his 
brothers, but when William Delafield Arnold 
died at Gibraltar on his way home from India 
in 1859, he mourned him both in “ Stanzas 
from Carnac ” and in “ A Southern Night.” 

In 1841 Matthew Arnold went up to Oxford 
as a scholar of Balliol College. Of his actual life 
at the University we know very little. His 
published letters, almost our only source of 
information, do not begin until some years after 
he had come down. But the influence of Oxford 
was abiding, making itself felt everywhere in 
his work. Much of his writing may fairly be 
described as academic, though no flavour of 
disparagement need cling to the word. Arnold 
himself was ever ready to acknowledge this 
influence ; and his sense of all that he owed to 
Oxford found expression in words which, often 
as they have been quoted, should never want 

i3 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

their place in any selection of his poetry. For 
if, just now and then, that poetry fell dan¬ 
gerously near the level of prose, here for once 
his prose, permeated and made rhythmical with 
a fine emotion, becomes that rarest form of art, 
a prose poem. 

Beautiful city ! So venerable, so lovely, so un¬ 
ravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our century, 
so serene ! 

There are our young barbarians, all at play ! 

And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her 
gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her 
towers the last enchantment of the Middle Age, who 
will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps 
ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to 
the ideal, to perfection,—to beauty, in a word, which 
is only truth seen from another side ?—nearer, perhaps, 
than all the science of Tubingen. Adorable dreamer, 
whose heart has been so romantic ! who hast given 
thyself so prodigally, given thyself to sides and to 
heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines ! home 
of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular 
names, and impossible loyalties ! 

This is the most eloquent tribute that Arnold, 
or perhaps any one else, ever paid to Oxford 
herself. But Oxford friendships and that beauti¬ 
ful countryside which means so much to some 
Oxford men—and the river, which was almost 
literally “ Father ” Thames to him—he com¬ 
memorated in two of his loveliest poems—two 
poems which, though many years separated 
their production, he wished should always be 
read as parts of a whole. The first of these 

14 




ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

poems, “ The Scholar Gipsy,** was suggested by 
a story in the “ Vanity of Dogmatising ** by 
Joseph Glanvil, a seventeenth-century moralist, 
of a young man who was forced by poverty to 
leave the University and so joined “a company 
of vagabond gipsies.” 

THE SCHOLAR GIPSY 

Go, for they call you, Shepherd, from the hill ; 

Go, Shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes : 

No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed, 

Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats, 

Nor the cropp’d grasses shoot another head. 

But when the fields are still, 

And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest, 

And only the white sheep are sometimes seen 
Cross and recross the strips of moon-blanch’d 
green ; 

Come, Shepherd, and again renew the quest. 

Here, where the reaper was at work of late, 

In this high field’s dark corner, where he leaves 
His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruse, 

And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves, 

Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use ; 

Here will I sit and wait, 

While to my ear from uplands far away 
The bleating of the folded flocks is borne ; 

With distant cries of reapers in the corn— 

All the live murmur of a summer’s day. 

Screen’d is this nook o’er the high, half-reap’d field, 
And here till sun-down, Shepherd, will I be. 

Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep 
And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see 

15 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Pale blue convolvulus in tendrils creep : 

And air-swept lindens yield 
Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers 
Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid, 

And bower me from the August sun with shade ; 
And the eye travels down to Oxford’s towers : 

And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book— 

Come, let me read the oft-read tale again, 

The story of that Oxford scholar poor 
Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain, 

Who, tired of knocking at Preferment’s door, 

One summer morn forsook 
His friends, and went to learn the Gipsy lore, 

And roam’d the world with that wild brotherhood, 
And came, as most men deem’d, to little good, 
But came to Oxford and his friends no more. 

But once, years after, in the country lanes, 

Two scholars whom at college erst he knew 
Met him, and of his way of life enquired. 
Whereat he answer’d, that the Gipsy crew, 

His mates, had arts to rule as they desired 
The workings of men’s brains ; 

And they can bind them to what thoughts they will: 
“ And I,” he said, “ the secret of their art, 

When fully learn’d, will to the world impart : 
But it needs happy moments for this skill.” 

This said, he left them, and return’d no more, 

But rumours hung about the country side 
That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray, 

Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied 
In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey, 

The same the Gipsies wore. 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring : 

At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors, 

On the warm ingle bench, the smock-frock’d boors 
Had found him seated at their entering. 

But, mid their drink and clatter, he would fly : 

And I myself seem half to know thy looks, 

And put the shepherds, Wanderer, on thy trace ; 
And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks 
I ask if thou hast pass’d their quiet place ; 

Or in my boat I lie 

Moor’d to the cool bank in the summer heats, 

Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine fills, 
And watch the warm green-muffled Cumner hills, 
And wonder if thou haunt’st their shy retreats. 

For most, I know, thou lov’st retired ground. 

Thee, at the ferry, Oxford riders blithe, 

Returning home on summer nights, have met 
Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe, 
Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, 

As the slow punt swings round : 

And leaning backwards in a pensive dream, 

And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers 
Pluck’d in shy fields and distant woodland bowers, 
And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream. 

And then they land, and thou art seen no more. 
Maidens who from the distant hamlets come 
To dance around the Fyfield elm in May, 

Oft through the darkening fields have seen thee 
roam, 

Or cross a stile into the public way. 

Oft thou hast given them store 
Of flowers—the frail-leaf’d, white anemone— 


17 




ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Dark bluebells drench'd with dews of summer eves— 
And purple orchises with spotted leaves— 

But none has words she can report of thee. 

And, above Godstow Bridge, when hay-time’s here 
In June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames, 

Men who through those wide fields of breezy grass 
Where black-wing’d swallows haunt the glittering 
Thames, 

To bathe in the abandon’d lasher pass, 

Have often pass’d thee near 
Bitting upon the river bank o’ergrown : 

Mark’d thy outlandish garb, thy figure spare, 

Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air ; 
But, when they came from bathing, thou wert 
gone. 

At some lone homestead in the Cumner hills, 

Where at her open door the housewife darns, 

Thou hast been seen, or hanging on a gate 
To watch the threshers in the mossy barns. 
Children, who early range these slopes and late 
For cresses from the rills, 

Have known thee watching, all an April day, 

The springing pastures and the feeding kine ; 

And mark’d thee, when the stars come out and 
shine, 

Through the long fdewy grass move slow away. 

In Autumn, on the skirts of Bagley wood, 

Where most the Gipsies by the turf-edged way 
Pitch their smoked tents, and every bush you see 
With scarlet patches tagg’d and shreds of grey, 
Above the forest ground call’d Thessaly— 

The blackbird picking food 

18 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Sees thee, nor stops his meal, nor fears at all ; 

So often has he known thee past him stray 
Rapt, twirling in thy hand a wither'd spray, 

And waiting for the spark from Heaven to fall. 

And once, in winter, on the causeway chill 
Where home through flooded fields foot-travellers 
go, 

Have I not pass’d thee on the wooden bridge 
Wrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow, 

Thy face towards Hinksey and its wintry ridge ? 
And thou hast climb’d the hill 
And gain’d the white brow of the Cumner range, 
Turn’d once to watch, while thick the snowflakes 
fall, 

The line of festal light in Christ-Church hall— 
Then sought thy straw in some sequester’d 
grange. 

But what—I dream ! Two hundred years are flown 
Since first thy story ran through Oxford halls, 

And the grave Glanvil did the tale inscribe 
That thou wert wander’d from the studious walls 
To learn strange arts, and join a Gipsy tribe : 

And thou from earth art gone 
Long since, and in some quiet churchyard laid ; 
Some country nook, where o’er thy unknown 
grave 

Tall grasses and white flowering nettles wave— 
Under a dark red-fruited yew-tree’s shade. 

—No, no, thou hast not felt the lapse of hours. 

For what wears out the life of mortal men ? 

’Tis that from change to change their being rolls : 
’Tis that repeated shocks, again, again, 


19 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Exhaust the energy of strongest souls, 

And numb the elastic powers. 

Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen, 

And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit, 

To the just-pausing Genius we remit 

Our worn-out life, and are—what we have been. 

Thou hast not lived, why should’st thou perish, so ? 
Thou hadst one aim, one business, one desire : 

Else wert thou long since number’d with the 
dead— 

Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire. 

The generations of thy peers are fled, 

And we ourselves shall go ; 

But thou possessest an immortal lot, 

And we imagine thee exempt from age 
And living as thou liv’st on Glanvil’s page, 
Because thou hadst—what we, alas, have not. 

For early didst thou leave the world, with powers 
Fresh, undiverted to the world without, 

Firm to their mark, not spent on other things ; 
Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt, 
Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, 
brings. 

O Life unlike to ours ! 

Who fluctuate idly without term or scope, 

Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he 
strives, 

And each half lives a hundred different lives ; 
Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope. 


Thou waitest for the spark from Heaven : and we, 
Light half-believers of our casual creeds, 

29 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will’d, 

Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, 
Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd ; 
For whom each year we see 
Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new ; 

Who hesitate and falter life away, 

And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day— 

Ah, do not we, Wanderer, await it too ? 

Yes, we await it, but it still delays, 

And then we suffer ; and amongst us One, 

Who most has suffer’d, takes dejectedly 
His seat upon the intellectual throne ; 

And all his store of sad experience he 
Lays bare of wretched days ; 

Tells us his misery’s birth and growth and signs, 
And how the dying spark of hope was fed, 

And how the breast was sooth’d, and how the 
head, 

And all his hourly varied anodynes. 

This for our wisest : and we others pine, 

And wish the long unhappy dream would end, 

And waive all claim to bliss, and try to bear 
With close-lipp’d Patience for our only friend, 

Sad Patience, too near neighbour to Despair : 

But none has hope like thine. 

Thou through the fields and through the woods dost 
stray, 

Roaming the country side, a truant boy, 

Nursing thy project in unclouded joy, 

And every doubt long blown by time away. 

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, 

And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames ; 

21 



ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Before this strange disease of modern life, 

With its sick hurry, its divided aims, 

Its heads o’ertax’d, its palsied hearts, was rife— 
Fly hence, our contact fear ! 

Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood ! 
Aveise, as Dido did with gesture stern 
From her false friend’s approach in Hades turn. 
Wave us away, and keep thy solitude. 

Still nursing the unconquerable hope, 

Still clutching the inviolable shade, 

With a free onward impulse brushing through, 

By night, the silver’d branches of the glade— 

Far on the forest skirts, where none pursue 
On some mild pastoral slope 
Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales, 

Freshen thy flowers, as in former years, 

With dew, or listen with enchanted ears, 

From the dark dingles, to the nightingales. 

But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly 1 
For strong the infection of our mental strife, 

Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest; 
And we should win thee from thy own fair life, 
Like us distracted, and like us unblest. 

Soon, soon thy cheer would die, 

Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix’d thy powers, 
And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made : 
And then thy glad perennial youth would fade, 
Fade, and grow old at last and die like ours. 

Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles I 
—As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea, 
Descried at sunrise an emerging prow 
Lifting the cool-hair’d creepers stealthily 
22 



ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

The fringes of a southward-facing brow 
Among the Aegean isles : 

And saw the merry Grecian coaster come, 

Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine, 
Green bursting figs, and tunnies steep’d in brine ; 
And knew the intruders on his ancient home, 

The young light-hearted Masters of the waves ; 

And snatch’d his rudder, and shook out more sail, 
And day and night held on indignantly 
O’er the blue Midland waters with the gale, 

Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily, 

To where the Atlantic raves 
Outside the Western Straits, and unbent sails 
There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets 
of foam, 

Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come ; 

And on the beach undid his corded bales. 

> 

The “ Scholar Gipsy ” was first published in 
the “ Poems’ 1 of 1853. “ Thyrsis,” its com¬ 

panion, an elegy on Arnold’s friend Arthur 
Hugh Clough, who died in 1861, did not appear 
until four years after the event it commemo¬ 
rated. Arnold had been two years writing it. 
The diction, modelled on that of Theocritus, 
was, he says, intended “ to be so artless as to be 
almost heedless.” “ Heedless ” seems a poor 
epithet to apply to this exquisite language, but 
“ Thyrsis ” has a quality of Sicilian grace and 
simplicity which is not quite paralleled by any¬ 
thing in English literature except the poem as 
a sequel to which it was written. “Lycidas,” 
that incomparable masterpiece, is grander ; 

23 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

“ Adonais ” soars, in its great moments, to 
etherial heights which neither Milton nor Arnold 
ever knew ; but among English elegies, those 
two and Swinburne’s sombre, exotic lament for 
Baudelaire, “ Ave atque Vale,” are the only 
peers of “ Thyrsis.” 


THYRSIS 
A MONODY 

To commemorate the Author’s friend, Arthur Hugh Clough, 
who died at Florence, 1861 

How changed is here each spot man makes or fills ! 

In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same ; 

The village-street its haunted mansion lacks, 

And from the sign is gone Sibylla’s name, 

And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks. 
Are ye too changed, ye hills ? 

See, ’tis no foot of unfamiliar men 

To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays 1 
Here came I often, often, in old days ; 

Thyrsis and I ; we still had Thyrsis then. 

Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm, 

Up past the wood, to where the elm-tree crowns 
The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames ? 
The Signal-Elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs, 

The Vale, the three lone wears, the youthful 
Thames ?— 

This winter-eve is warm, 

Humid the air ; leafless, yet soft as spring, 

The tender purple spray on copse and briers ; 

And that sweet City with her dreaming spires 
She needs not June for beauty’s heightening, 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night. 

Only, methinks, some loss of habit’s power 

Befalls me wandering through this upland dim. 
Once pass’d I blindfold here, at any hour, 

Now seldom come I, since I came with him. 

That single elm-tree bright 
Against the west—I miss it 1 is it gone ? 

We prized it dearly ; while it stood, we said, 

Our friend, the Scholar-Gipsy, was not dead ; 
While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on. 

Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here 1 

But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick 
And with the country-folk acquaintance made 
By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick. 

Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay’d. 

Ah me ! this many a year 
My pipe is lost, my shepherd’s-holiday. 

Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heart 
Into the world and wave of men depart ; 

But Thyrsis of his own will went away. 

It irk’d him to be here, he could not rest. 

He loved each simple joy the country yields, 

He loved his mates ; but yet he could not keep, 
For that a shadow lower’d on the fields, 

Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep. 

Some life of men unblest 

He knew, which made him droop, and fill’d his head. 
He went ; his piping took a troubled sound 
Of storms that rage outside our happy ground ; 
He could not wait their passing, he is dead. 

So, some tempestuous morn in early June, 

When the year’s primal burst of bloom is o’er, 


25 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Before the roses and the longest day— 

When garden-walks, and all the grassy floor, 

With blossoms, red and white, of fallen May, 

And chestnut-flowers are strewn— 

So have I heard the cuckoo’s parting cry, 

From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees, 
Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze : 
The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I 1 

Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go ? 

Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on, 
Soon will the musk carnations break and swell, 
Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon, 
Sweet-William with its homely cottage-smell, 

And stocks in fragrant blow ; 

Roses that down the alleys shine afar, 

And open, jasmine-muffled lattices, 

And groups under the dreaming garden-trees, 

And the full moon, and the white evening-star. 

He hearkens not ! light comer, he is flown ! 

What matters it ? next year he will return, 

And we shall have him in the sweet spring-days, 
With whitening hedges, and uncrumpling fern, 

And blue-bells trembling by the forest-ways, 

And scent of hay new-mown. 

But Thyrsis never more we swains shall see ; 

See him come back, and cut a smoother reed, 
And blow a strain the world at last shall heed— 
For Time, not Corydon, hath conquer’d thee. 

Alack, for Corydon no rival now ! 

But when Sicilian shepherds lost a mate, 

Some good survivor with his flute would go, 
Piping a ditty sad for Bion’s fate, 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

And cross the unpermitted ferry’s flow, 

And unbend Pluto’s brow, 

And make leap up with joy the beauteous head 
Of Proserpine, among whose crowned hair 
Are flowers, first open’d on Sicilian air ; 

And flute his friend, like Orpheus, from the dead. 

O easy access to the hearer’s grace, 

When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine 1 
For she herself had trod Sicilian fields, 

She knew the Dorian water’s gush divine, 

She knew each lily white which Enna yields, 
Each rose with blushing face ; 

She loved the Dorian pipe, the Dorian strain. 

But ah, of our poor Thames she never heard ! 
Her foot the Cumner cowslips never stirr’d ; 

And we should tease her with our plaint in vain. 

Well ! wind-dispersed and vain the words will be, 

Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour 

In the old haunt, and find our tree-topp’d hill ! 
Who, if not I, for questing here hath power ? 

I know the wood which hides the daffodil, 

I know the Fyfield tree, 

I know what white, what purple fritillaries 
The grassy harvest of the river-fields, 

Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields ; 
And what sedged brooks are Thames’s tributaries ; 

I know these slopes ; who knows them if not I ? — 
But many a dingle on the loved hill-side, 

With thorns once studded, old, white-blossom’d 
trees, 

Where thick the cowslips grew, and, far descried, 
High tower’d the spikes of purple orchises, 

Hath since our day put by 


27 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

The coronals of that forgotten time ; 

Down each green bank hath gone the ploughboy’s 
team, 

And only in the hidden brookside gleam 
Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime. 

Where is the girl, who, by the boatman’s door, 

Above the locks, above the boating throng, 

Unmoor’d our skiff, when, through the Wytham 
flats, 

Red loosestrife and blond meadow-sweet among, 
And darting swallows, and light water-gnats, 

We track’d the shy Thames shore ? 

Where are the mowers, who, as the tiny swell 
Of our boat passing heaved the river-grass, 

Stood with suspended scythe to see us pass ? 

They are all gone, and thou art gone as well. 

Yes, thou art gone, and round me too the Night 
In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade. 

I see her veil draw soft across the day, 

I feel her slowly chilling breath invade 

The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent 
with grey ; 

I feel her finger light 

Laid pausefully upon life’s headlong train ; 

The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew, 
The heart less bounding at emotion new, 

And hope, once crush’d, less quick to spring again. 

And long the way appears, which seem’d so short 
To the unpractised eye of sanguine youth ; 

And high the mountain-tops, in cloudy air, 

The mountain-tops where is the throne of Truth, 
Tops in life’s morning-sun so bright and bare, 
Unbreachable the fort 


28 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Of the long-batter’d world uplifts its wall; 

And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows, 
And near and real the charm of thy repose, 

And Night as welcome as a friend would fall. 

But hush ! the upland hath a sudden loss 
Of quiet;—Look ! adown the dusk hill-side 
A troop of Oxford hunters going home, 

As in old days, jovial and talking, ride. 

From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they 
come. 

Quick 1 let me fly, and cross 
Into yon further field 1 —Tis done ; and see, 
Back’d by the sunset, which doth glorify 
The orange and pale violet evening-sky, 

Bare on its lonely ridge, the Tree I the Tree ! 

I take the omen I Eve lets down her veil, 

The white fog creeps from bush to bush about, 

The west unflushes, the high stars grow bright, 
And in the scatter’d farms the lights come out. 

I cannot reach the Signal-Tree to-night, 

Yet, happy omen, hail I 
Hear it from thy broad lucent Arnovale 

(For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep 
The morningless and unawakening sleep 
Under the flowery oleanders pale), 

Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our Tree is there 1 — 

Ah, vain 1 These English fields, this upland 
dim, 

These brambles pale with mist engarlanded, 

That lone, sky-pointing Tree, are not for him. 

To a boon southern country he is fled, 

And now in happier air, 


29 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Wandering with the great Mother’s train divine 
(And purer or more subtle soul than thee, 

I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see !) 

Within a folding of the Apennine, 

Thou hearest the immortal strains of old. 

Putting his sickle to the perilous grain, 

In the hot cornfield of the Phrygian king, 

For thee the Lityerses song again 

Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing ; 
Sings his Sicilian fold, 

His sheep, his hapless love, his blinded eyes ; 

And how a call celestial round him rang, 

And heavenward from the fountain-brink he 
sprang, 

And all the marvel of the golden skies. 

There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here, 

Sole in these fields ; yet will I not despair. 

Despair I will not, while I yet descry 
Neath the soft canopy of English air 

That lonely Tree against the western sky. 

Still, still these slopes, ’tis clear, 

Our Gipsy-Scholar haunts, outliving thee ! 

Fields where the sheep from cages pull the hay, 
Woods with anemones in flower till May, 

Know him a wanderer still ; then why not me ? 

A fugitive and gracious light he seeks, 

Shy to illumine ; and I seek it too. 

This does not come with houses or with gold, 
With place, with honour, and a flattering crew 
’Tis not in the world’s market bought and sold. 
But the smooth-slipping weeks 
Drop by, and leave its seeker still untired. 

Out of the heed of mortals he is gone, 


30 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

He wends unfollow’d, he must house alone ; 

Yet on he fares, by his own heart inspired. 

Thou too, O Thyrsis, on like quest wert bound, 

Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour. 

Men gave thee nothing ; but this happy quest, 

If men esteem’d thee feeble, gave thee power, 

If men procured thee trouble, gave thee rest. 

And this rude Cumner ground, 

Its fir-topped Hurst, its farms, its quiet fields, 

Here cam’st thou in thy jocund youthful time, 
Here was thine height of strength, thy golden 
prime; 

And still the haunt beloved a virtue yields. 

What though the music of thy rustic flute 
Kept not for long its happy, country tone ; 

Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note 
Of men contention-tost, of men who groan, 

Which task’d thy pipe too sore, and tired thy 
throat— 

It fail’d, and thou wert mute. 

Yet hadst thou alway visions of our light, 

And long with men of care thou couldst not stay, 
And soon thy foot resumed its wandering way, 
Left human haunt, and on alone till night. 

Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here ! 

’Mid city-noise, not, as with thee of yore, 

Thyrsis, in reach of sheep-bells is my home. 

Then through the great town’s harsh, heart-weary¬ 
ing roar, 

Let in thy voice a whisper often come, 

To chase fatigue and fear : 

Why faintest thou ? I wander’d till I died. 

Roam on ; the light we sought is shining still. 

3i 



ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Dost thou ask proof ? Our Tree yet crowns the 
hill, 

Our Scholar travels yet the loved hill-side. 

Arnold himself has left an interesting criti¬ 
cism of this poem. “ One has the feeling,” he 
wrote to Principal Shairp, “ if one reads the 
poem as a memorial poem, that not enough is 
said about Clough in it ; I feel this so much 
that I do not send the poem to Mrs. Clough. 
Still Clough had his idyllic side, too ; to deal 
with this suited my desire to deal again with 
that Cumner country : anyway, only so could 
I treat the matter this time.” It is just because 
the poet treated the matter “so,” and not in 
any other way, that the poem stands so far above 
his other elegies, “ Heine’s Grave,” “ Haworth 
Churchyard,” or the “ Memorial Verses ” 
written on the death of Wordsworth. “ Thyrsis ” 
may not contain the whole of Clough ; but it 
contains the best of Arnold. 

Besides Clough, who was some three years 
his senior, Matthew Arnold had several other 
friends at Oxford who were destined to distinc¬ 
tion in after-life. One of these was J ohn Camp¬ 
bell Shairp, the Principal Shairp just referred to. 
Another was John Duke Coleridge, afterwards 
Lord Chief Justice of England, who has put it 
on record that Arnold was a member of a select 
debating society known as “ The Decade.” No 
doubt these brilliant young men “ tired the sun 
with talking ” on many subjects. Arnold, we 
know, was, unlike Clough, utterly indifferent 
32 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

to the Tractarian movement, which was then at 
its height. But if he was not yet interested in 
religious or political questions, he was soon to 
become so. In literature, although he had 
already felt the influence of Wordsworth and 
probably of Goethe, his tastes were mainly 
classical. Homer, Epictetus, and, above all, 
Sophocles, as he says in the famous sonnet “ To 
a Friend,” which saw the light a few years later, 
were his favourite companions, the solace of a 
youth which, gaily as it was carried, must have 
been a time of much spiritual turmoil. 

TO A FRIEND 

Who prop, thou ask’st, in these bad days, my mind ? 
He much, the old man, who, clearest-soul’d of men, 
Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen, 

And Tmolus’ hill, and Smyrna’s bay, though blind. 
Much he, whose friendship I not long since won, 

That halting slave, who in Nicopolis 
Taught Arrian, when Vespasian’s brutal son 
Clear’d Rome of what most shamed him. But be his 
My special thanks, whose even-balanc’d soul, 

From first youth tested up to extreme old age, 

Business could not make dull, nor passion wild : 

Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole : 

The mellow glory of the Attic stage ; 

Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child. 

We think of Matthew Arnold, with his beau¬ 
tiful smile, as the suave cosmopolitan ; the 
debonair author of “ Friendship’s Garland ” ; 
the living argument for his own gospel of 
Culture ; Sweetness and Light incarnate. We 
c 33 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

do not sufficiently distinguish between the 
young poet and the mature prose-writer. It is 
true that he was no Byron to carry across 
Europe “ the pageant of his bleeding heart ” ; 
no Swinburne to have 

twisted through his hair 
Such tendrils as the wild Loves wear, 

And heard what mirth the Maenads made. 

When he read of Shelley’s circle in Dowden’s 
“ Life,” he exclaimed “ What a set ! ” He 
thought Shelley’s poetry lacked sanity, and the 
fiery appearance of Swinburne in the poetic 
firmament drove the apostle of Hellenism several 
degrees towards Hebraism. These judgments 
were passed when he was no longer a young 
man ; but from the first the classics meant for 
him Sophocles, while for Swinburne, if they 
sometimes meant iEschylus, they often meant 
Catullus and occasionally Petronius. The differ¬ 
ence is essential. Arnold was always reflective, 
always trying to see life steadily and see it 
whole. When, in poems among his earliest, he 
contrasts youth and age, he writes, one feels, 
with greater prescience of and, one is tempted 
to add, with greater sympathy for the future than 
feeling for the present. This frame of mind is 
apparent in “ Lines written by a Death-bed,” 
of which the second stanza was subsequently 
separated and re-christened “ Youth and Calm ” 
while the first was embedded in “ Iseult of 
Ireland ” ; and it also makes itself felt in the 
fine sonnet “Youth’s Agitations.” 

34 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

YOUTH’S AGITATIONS 
When I shall be divorced some ten years hence, 
From this poor present self which I am now ; 

When youth has done its tedious vain expense 
Of passions that for ever ebb and flow ; 

Shall I not joy youth’s heats are left behind, 

And breathe more happy in an even clime ? 

Ah no, for then I shall begin to find 
A thousand virtues in this hated time. 

Then I shall wish its agitations back, 

And all its thwarting currents of desire ; 

Then I shall praise the heat which then I lack, 

And call this hurrying fever, generous fire, 

And sigh that one thing only has been lent 
To youth and age in common—discontent. 

Yet, when all is said, Arnold was once young 
and always a poet. His gentle personality was 
forged in the fire. He had his period of storm 
and stress, which was not exclusively the fruit 
of intellectual searchings. In view of his reti¬ 
cence—in view, especially, of the fact that he 
deliberately discouraged the writing of his 
biography in any detail—it behoves us to tread 
this ground discreetly. But in an attempt to see 
a poet through the medium of his poetry, it is 
surely permitted to use whatever data that 
poetry affords. And Arnold’s poetry is peculiarly 
full of data. Early sonnets, as well as later 
elegies, are often of the “ occasional ” order. 
Moreover, the poet was sometimes specific where 
others would have preferred vagueness All 
lyrics are personal in a general sense. One 
series, at least, of Arnold’s is personal in a 

35 





ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

particular sense ; the series, that is to say, to 
which the title “ Switzerland ” was given. 

In his first book was a short poem “To 
my Friends who ridiculed a tender Leave- 
taking.” To this circumstantial heading was 
afterwards prefixed “ A Memory-Picture,” the 
original title finally being dropped. The poem 
concerns a certain Marguerite, whose charms 
are described with a graceful precision worthy 
of the seventeenth century—a comparison rarely 
suggested by Arnold’s work. The lady is the 
subject of four more pieces in the poet’s second 
volume ; but a year has elapsed since the 
tender leave-taking, and the returning lover has 
found that Marguerite has not kept herself 
so faithfully as he. Hinc illce lacrimca . These 
five poems formed the nucleus of “ Switzer¬ 
land,” which in its final form consists of seven 
numbers, the “Memory-Picture” and “A 
Dream,” which was for a time included, having 
been separated, and an epilogue having been 
supplied in “The Terrace at Berne,” “ com¬ 
posed ten years after the preceding.” What one 
gathers from this sequence is that Arnold, when 
somewhere between twenty and thirty, was 
captivated by a fair, blue-eyed French girl at 
Berne, whose affection for the poet was not 
sufficiently deep to stand a year’s separation, 
and that he for consolation turned to the clean 
joy of the mountains. 

These poems are not among Arnold’s best ; 
work, though they contain fine passages. “ A 
Memory-Picture ” is charmingly light of touch, 
36 





ARNOLD © HIS POETRY 

but the others smack a little of the prig, and are 
too often rhetorical where they ought to be 
passionate. The feeling in them is undoubtedly 
sincere, but Arnold lacked abandon and he moral¬ 
ises when he should be ecstatic. There is, how¬ 
ever, another series, “ Faded Leaves,” of a 
nature similar to “Switzerland ” but rather less 
circumstantial ; and in this, the range of emotion 
being more limited, the result is far more satis¬ 
fying. The final piece, “Longing,” may be 
quoted as perhaps the most perfect of Arnold’s 
love lyrics ; the reservation being made, however, 
that others have finer moments and that less per¬ 
sonal, or more deliberately philosophical, poems in 
which love is the theme are not at present under 
consideration. 

LONGING 

Come to me in my dreams, and then 
By day I shall be well again. 

For then the night will more than pay 
The hopeless longing of the day. 

Come, as thou cam’st a thousand times 
A messenger from radiant climes, 

And smile on thy new world, and be 
As kind to others as to me. 

Or, as thou never cam’st in sooth, 

Come now, and let me dream it truth. 

And part my hair, and kiss my brow, 

And say—My love 1 why sufferest thou ? 

Come to me in my dreams, and then 
By day I shall be well again. 

For then the night will more than pay 
The hopeless longing of the day. 


37 



ARNOLD © HIS POETRY 


In one of the poems to Marguerite there is a 
passage in which he apostrophises his own heart 


as 


thou lonely heart, 

Which never yet without remorse 
Even for a moment didst depart 
From thy remote and sphered course 
To haunt the place where passions reign— 
Back to thy solitude again ! 


This gives the measure of the significance of the 
Marguerite poems and justifies our dwelling on 
the matter in a way which savours, perhaps, of 
impertinence. Nothing better illustrates Arnold’s 
natural austerity than this apparent departure 
from it. He was no aesthete in quest of emo¬ 
tions. Intensely fastidious, he was obviously ill 
at ease in his adventure and, however he might 
regret its conclusion, glad to get back to the 
large, impersonal love of Nature and to intel¬ 
lectual joys. Like Christina Rossetti, he had a 
strong sense of the solitude of the human soul. 
The idea runs through much of his poetry, 
coming to its finest expression in “ The Buried 
Life,” though here the thought is that our real 
personality is hidden even from ourselves and 
that only love, and that but rarely, can bring it 
to the light. 

THE BURIED LIFE 

Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet, 

Behold, with tears my eyes are wet. 

I feel a nameless sadness o’er me roll. 

Yes, yes, we know that we can jest, 


38 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

We know, we know that we can smile ; 

But there’s a something in this breast 
To which thy light words bring no rest 
And thy gay smiles no anodyne. 

Give me thy hand, and hush awhile, 

And turn those limpid eyes on mine, 

And let me read there, love, thy inmost soul. 

Alas, is even Love too weak 
To unlock the heart and let it speak ? 

Are even lovers powerless to reveal 
To one another what indeed they feel ? 

I knew the mass of men conceal’d 

Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal’d 

They would by other men be met 

With blank indifference, or with blame reproved : 

I knew they lived and moved 
Trick’d in disguises, alien to the rest 
Of men, and alien to themselves—and yet 

There beats one heart in every human breast. 

But we, my love—does a like spell benumb 
Our hearts—our voices ?—must we too be dumb ? 

Ah, well for us, if even we, 

Even for a moment, can get free 
Our heart, and have our lips unchain’d : 

For that which seals them hath been deep ordain’d. 

Fate, which foresaw 

How frivolous a baby man would be, 

By what distractions he would be possess’d, 

How he would pour himself in every strife, 

And well-nigh change his own identity ; 

That it might keep from his capricious play 
His genuine self, and force him to obey 


39 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Even in his own despite, his being’s law, 

Bade, through the deep recesses of our breast, 

The unregarded river of our life 
Pursue with indiscernible flow its way ; 

And that we should not see 

The buried stream, and seem to be 

Eddying about in blind uncertainty, 

Though driving on with it eternally. 

But often in the world’s most crowded streets, 

But often, in the din of strife, 

There rises an unspeakable desire 
After the knowledge of our buried life, 

A thirst to spend our fire and restless force 
In tracking out our true, original course ; 

A longing to enquire 

Into the mystery of this heart that beats 

So wild, so deep in us, to know 

Whence our thoughts come, and where they go. 

And many a man in his own breast then delves, 

But deep enough, alas, none ever mines : 

And we have been on many thousand lines, 

And we have shown on each talent and power, 

But hardly have we, for one little hour, 

Been on our own line, have we been ourselves ; 
Hardly had skill to utter one of all 
The nameless feelings that course through our breast 
But they course on for ever unexpress’d. 

And long we try in vain to speak and act 
Our hidden self, and what we say and do 
Is eloquent, is well—but ’tis not true : 

And then we will no more be rack’d 
With inward striving, and demand 
Of all the thousand things of the hour 
Their stupefying power, 

Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call ; 

40 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn, 

From the soul’s subterranean depth upborne 
As from an infinitely distant land, 

Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey 
A melancholy into all our day. 

Only—but this is rare— 

When a beloved hand is laid in ours, 

When, jaded with the rush and glare 
Of the interminable hours, 

Our eyes can in another’s eyes read clear, 

When our world-deafen’d ear 

Is by the tones of a loved voice caress’d, 

A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast 
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again : 

The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, 

And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we 
know. 

A man becomes aware of his life’s flow 
And hears its winding murmur, and he sees 
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. 

And there arrives a lull in the hot race 
Wherein he doth for ever chase 
That flying and elusive shadow, Rest. 

An air of coolness plays upon his face, 

And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. 

And then he thinks he knows 
The Hills where his life rose, 

And the Sea where it goes. 

The conviction of man’s essential loneliness 
expressed in such poems as this inevitably drove 
Arnold to the contemplation of Nature and his 
own soul. His worship of Nature, Wordsworthian 
though the form it took, was spontaneous : 

4i 


f 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

cause rather than effect of his admiration for the 
older poet. It is present as an essence in all his 
work. Nature is grander than man, he says ; 
and even when paying tribute to Wordsworth 
he makes her say : 

The singer was less than his themes, 

Life, and emotion, and I. 

In the poem from which these lines are quoted 
and its companion piece, “ The Youth of 
Nature ” and “ The Youth of Man,” he con¬ 
fesses his faith more explicitly, perhaps, than 
anywhere else. Nature is calm and eternal, the 
ordinary life of man transient and futile. Our 
only hope of salvation, of that peace which 
Arnold held to be the true end of life, lies in 
learning her large, impersonal harmonies. 

While the locks are yet brown on thy head, 

While the soul still looks through thine eyes, 

While the heart still pours 

The mantling blood to thy cheek, 

Sink, O Youth, in thy soul 1 
Yearn to the greatness of Nature ! 

Rally the good in the depths of thyself. 

It is scarcely necessary to point out that this is 
no vague, passive, Nirvanic creed. The “ buried 
life ” and the peace of Nature are essentially 
one We must strive to pierce through the 
outer discords, in order that we may find the har¬ 
mony within our souls. Arnold’s teaching is 
summed up in the old Greek precept, “ Know 
42 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

thyself ” ; the justification of the precept being 
contained in that other saying, “ The Kingdom 
of God is within you.” Perhaps this is most 
beautifully and clearly stated in the following 
lyric : 

SELF-DEPENDENCE 

Weary of myself, and sick of asking 
What I am, and what I ought to be, 

At the vessel’s prow I stand, which bears me 
Forwards, forwards, o’er the star-lit sea. 

And a look of passionate desire 
O'er the sea and to the stars I send : 

“Ye who from my childhood up have calm’d me, 
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end. 

“ Ah, once more,” I cried, “ Ye Stars, Ye Waters, 
On my heart your mighty charm renew : 

Still, still, let me, as I gaze upon you, 

Feel my soul becoming vast like you.” 

From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven, 
Over the lit sea’s unquiet way, 

In the rustling night-air came the answer— 

“ Wouldst thou be as these are ? live as they. 

“ Unaffrighted by the silence round them, 
Undistracted by the sights they see, 

These demand not that the things without them 
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy. 

“ And with joy the stars perform their shining, 
And the sea its long moon-silver’d roll. 

For alone they live, nor pine with noting 
All the fever of some differing soul. 


43 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

“ Bounded by themselves, and unobservant 
In what state God’s other works may be, 

In their own tasks all their powers pouring, 

These attain the mighty life you see.” 

O air-born Voice ! long since, severely clear, 

A cry like thine in my own heart I hear. 

“ Resolve to be thyself : and know, that he 
Who finds himself, loses his misery.” 

We are to attain, therefore, to the life of the 
sea and the stars. But in the arrangement of 
his poems which Arnold himself made, “ Self- 
Dependence ” is followed by “ Morality,” in 
which we are told that in our very efforts, our 
“ strife divine,” we achieve something of which 
Nature, just because she is Nature, is incapable. 

MORALITY 

We cannot kindle when we will 
The fire that in the heart resides 
The spirit bloweth and is still, 

In mystery our soul abides : 

But tasks in hours of insight will’d 
Can be through hours of gloom fulfill’d. 

With aching hands and bleeding feet 
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone ; 

We bear the burden and the heat 
Of the long day, and wish ’twere done. 

Not till the hours of light return 
All we have built do we discern. 

Then, when the clouds are off the soul, 

When thou dost bask in Nature’s eye, 

44 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Ask, how she view’d thy self-control, 

Thy struggling task’d morality— 

Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air, 

Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair. 

And she, whose censure thou dost dread, 

Whose eyes thou wert afraid to seek, 

See, on her face a glow is spread, 

A strong emotion on her cheek. 

“ Ah child,” she cries, “that strife divine— 
Whence was it, for it is not mine ? 

“ There is no effort on my brow— 

I do not strive, I do not weep. 

I rush with the swift spheres, and glow 
In joy, and, when I will, I sleep.— 

Yet that severe, that earnest air, 

I saw, I felt it once—but where ? 

“ I knew not yet the gauge of Time, 

Nor wore the manacles of Space. 

I felt it in some other clime— 

I saw it in some other place. 

—’Twas when the heavenly house I trod, 

And lay upon the breast of God.” 

There is Matthew Arnold’s morality, as he 
conceived it at the age of thirty and as he held 
it all his life. Later on, in “Culture and 
Anarchy,” he was to preach Hellenism—“ a 
term for giving our consciousness free play and 
enlarging its range,” the gospel of criticism 
before action. He practised what he preached. 
But if one wanted to define his moral code, one 
could not do better than borrow his own defini- 

45 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

tion of Hebraism : “ To walk staunchly by the 
best light one has, to be strict and sincere with 
oneself, not to be of the number of those who 
say and do not, to be in earnest,—this is the 
discipline by which alone man is enabled to 
rescue his life from thraldom to the passing 
moment and to his bodily senses, to ennoble it, 
and to make it eternal. And this discipline has 
been nowhere so effectively taught as in the 
school of Hebraism .” 1 

What it comes to is this. Arnold, living in 
the England of Early Victorian Liberalism, saw 
that what his countrymen wanted was the 
critical rather than the moral sense. So he 
insisted on Hellenism as a means of restoring 
the balance. But it was merely the accident 
of the times. It has already been mentioned that 
the phenomenon of Swinburne gave Hebraism 
a new value in his eyes. The phenomenon of 
Huxley had the same effect. Compared with 
Oscar Wilde, or even Pater, he was a Hebrew 
prophet, and not a Hebrew prophet in white kid 
gloves, as some one called him. His true ideal, 
in fact, was a perfect synthesis of the two 
qualities. That is what “ Morality ” means. 

But tasks in hours of insight will’d 

Can be through hours of gloom fulfill’d 

is simply a way of saying that what the Hellenic 
part of us has conceived the Hebraic can achieve. 
This duality is nowhere better expressed than 
in the sonnet which stood alike at the beginning 

1 “ Culture and Anarchy ” : Preface. 

46 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

of Arnold’s first volume of poems and at the 
beginning of his final collection. 

QUIET WORK 

One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee— 

One lesson that in every wind is blown, 

One lesson of two duties served in one, 

Though the loud world proclaim their enmity— 

Of Toil unsever’d from Tranquillity 
Of Labour, that in still advance outgrows 
Far noisier schemes, accomplish’d in Repose, 

Too great for haste, too high for rivalry. 

Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring, 

Man’s senseless uproar mingling with his toil, 

Still do thy sleepless ministers move on, 

Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting ; 

Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil ; 
Labourers that shall not fail, when man is gone. 

This sonnet leads naturally to the consideration 
of Arnold’s attitude towards that part of his 
own work which is here our main concern. 
I do not mean his criticism of poetry as an art, 
which will be touched on presently, but rather 
his thoughts as to the poet’s lot and place in the 
world. 

It has been observed, by one who had the 
subtlety to know better , 1 that Matthew Arnold 
was not a poet but a man who wrote poetry. 
If this means anything more than that he did 
not cultivate the extravagant externals affected 
by some of the brotherhood, it presumably 
implies that he wrote because he wanted to 

1 The late Mary Coleridge. 


47 




ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

rather than because he must, which is almost 
certainly true. But he was no less a poet for 
that. Whether or no the theory of compulsion 
is a romantic illusion is beside the question. 
No one could possibly look on Arnold’s poetry 
as a dilettante’s exercise in versification. It is 
intensely sincere, invariably lofty in conception, 
and wrought with an artist’s care. Not much 
more than that can be profitably claimed for 
any work of art. 

It may be admitted that Arnold’s attitude 
towards his art lacked the fervour of roman¬ 
ticism. He defined poetry as a criticism of life, 
and that definition is adequate for most, if not 
all, of his own work. But though this may 
limit his conception of poetry, it did not diminish 
in his eyes the high calling of the poet. His, no 
less than Shelley’s, was a “white ideal ” ; but 
it was of a cold rather than a blazing whiteness. 

In one of his later sonnets—“ Austerity of 
Poetry ”—Arnold likens the muse to the gaily 
dressed bride of Giacopone di Todi, who was 
found, when dead, to be wearing “ a robe of 
sackcloth next the smooth, white skin.” In 
“ Resignation ” he conceives of the poet as 
subduing his wayward energies to a calm, 
impersonal vision and comprehension of life. 

The Poet, to whose mighty heart 
Heaven doth a quicker pulse impart, 

Subdues that energy to scan 

Not his own course, but that of Man. 

Though he moves mountains ; though his day 
Be pass’d on the proud heights of sway ; 


48 




ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Though he had loosed a thousand chains ; 

Though he had borne immortal pains ; 

Action and suffering though he know ; 

—He hath not lived, if he lives so. 

He sees, in some great-historied land, 

A ruler of the people stand ; 

Sees his strong thought in fiery flood 
Roll through the heaving multitude ; 

Exults : yet for no moment’s space 
Envies the all-regarded place. 

Beautiful eyes meet his ; and he 
Bears to admire uncravingly : 

They pass ; he, mingled with the crowd, 

Is in their far-off triumphs proud. 

From some high station he looks down, 

At sunset, on a populous town ; 

Surveys each happy group that fleets, 

Toil ended, through the shining streets ; 

Each with some errand of its own ; — 

And does not say, “ I am alone.” 

He sees the gentle stir of birth 
When Morning purifies the earth ; 

He leans upon a gate, and sees 
The pastures, and the quiet trees. 

Low woody hill, with gracious bound, 

Folds the still valley almost round ; 

The cuckoo, loud on some high lawn, 

Is answer’d from the depth of dawn ; 

In the hedge straggling to the stream, 

Pale, dew-drench’d, half-shut roses gleam : 

But where the further side slopes down 
He sees the drowsy new-waked clown 
In his white quaint-embroidered frock 
Make, whistling, towards his mist-wreathed flock ; 
Slowly, behind the heavy tread, 

The wet flower’s grass heaves up its head.— 


49 



ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Lean’d on his gate, he gazes : tears 
Are in his eyes, and in his ears 
The murmur of a thousand years : 

Before him he sees Life unroll, 

A placid and continuous whole ; 

That general Life, which does not cease, 

Whose secret is not joy, but peace ; 

That Life, whose dumb wish is not miss’d 
If birth proceeds, if things subsist ; 

The Life of plants, and stones, and rain : 

The Life he craves ; if not in vain 
Fate gave, what Chance shall not controul, 

His sad lucidity of soul. 

But it is in the poem which gave a name to 
Arnold’s earliest volume and remains, in spite 
of certain imperfections of rhythm, almost, if not 
quite, his highest achievement both for thought 
and for language ; it is in “ The Strayed 
Reveller ” that he has his completest vision of 
the poet’s lot, to see like a god and to suffer like 
a man ; a finer and truer conception, surely, 
than that of “ Resignation.” This superb poem 
must here be given in full, as it should be given 
in all selections of English poetry, as an example 
of the finest flower of the classic tradition 
nourished on our soil. Nowhere are Arnold’s 
crystalline clarity of expression and his power 
of giving simple description a lyric quality more 
in evidence. 


5o 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

THE STRAYED REVELLER 
A YOUTH. CIRCE 
THE YOUTH 
Faster, faster, 

O Circe, Goddess, 

Let the wild, thronging train, 

The bright procession 
Of eddying forms, 

Sweep through my soul. 

Thou standest, smiling 
Down on me ; thy right arm 
Lean’d up against the column there, 

Props thy soft cheek ; 

Thy left holds, hanging loosely, 

The deep cup, ivy-cinctured, 

I held but now. 

Is it then evening 
So soon ? I see, the night dews, 

Cluster’d in thic’l beads, dim 
The agate brooch-stones 
On thy white shoulder. 

The cool night-wind, too, 

Blows through the portico, 

Stirs thy hair, Goddess, 

Waves thy white robe. 

CIRCE 

Whence art thou, sleeper ? 

THE YOUTH 

When the white dawn first 
Through the rough fir-planks 


51 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Of my hut, by the chestnuts, 

Up at the valley-head, 

Came breaking, Goddess, 

I sprang up, I threw round me 
My dappled fawn-skin : 

Passing out, from the wet turf, 

Where they lay, by the hut door, 

I snatch’d up my vine-crown, my fir-staff 
All drench’d in dew : 

Came swift down to join 
The rout early gather’d 
In the town, round the temple, 

Iacchus ’ white fane 
On yonder hill. 

Quick I pass’d, following 
The wood-cutters’ cart-track 
Down the dark valley ;—I saw 
On my left, through the beeches, 

Thy palace, Goddess, 

Smokeless, empty : 

Trembling, I enter’d ; beheld 
The court all silent, 

The lions sleeping ; 

On the altar, this bowl. 

I drank, Goddess— 

And sunk down here, sleeping, 

On the steps of thy portico. 

CIRCE 

Foolish boy ! Why tremblest thou ? 

Thou lovest it, then, my wine ? 

Wouldst more of it ? See, how glows, 
Through the delicate flush’d marble, 

The red creaming liquor, 

Strown with dark seeds 1 


52 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Drink, then ! I chide thee not, 

Deny thee not my bowl. 

Come, stretch forth thy hand, then— so,— 

Drink, drink again 1 

THE YOUTH 
Thanks, gracious One ! 

Ah, the sweet fumes again 
More soft, ah me 1 
More subtle-winding 
Than Pan’s flute-music. 

Faint—faint ! Ah me ! 

Again the sweet sleep. 

CIRCE 

Hist 1 Thou—within there 1 
Come forth, Ulysses ! 

Art tired with hunting ? 

While we range the woodland, 

See what the day brings. 

ULYSSES 
Ever new magic ! 

Hast thou then lur’d hither. 

Wonderful Goddess, by thy art, 

The young, languid-eyed Ampelus, 

Iacchus’ darling— 

Or some youth belov’d of Pan, 

Of Pan and the Nymphs ? 

That he sits, bending downward 
His white, delicate neck 
To the ivy-wreath’d marge 
Of thy cup :—the bright, glancing vine-leaves 
That crown his hair, 

Falling forwards, mingling 
With the dark ivy-plants ; 


53 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

His fawn-skin, half untied, 

Smear’d with red wine-stains ? Who is he, 

That he sits, overweigh’d 
By fumes of wine and sleep, 

So late, in thy portico ? 

What youth, Goddess,—what guest 
Of Gods or mortals ? 

CIRCE 

Hist ! he wakes ! 

I lur’d him not hither, Ulysses. 

Nay, ask him ! 

THE YOUTH 

Who speaks ? Ah ! Who comes forth 
To thy side, Goddess, from within ? 

How shall I name him ? 

This spare, dark-featur’d, 

Quick-eyed stranger ? 

Ah ! and I see too 
His sailor’s bonnet, 

His short coat, travel-tarnish'd, 

With one arm bare.— 

Art thou not he, whom fame 
This long time rumours 

The favour’d guest of Circe, brought by the waves ? 
Art thou he, stranger ? 

The wise Ulysses, 

Laertes’ son ? 


ULYSSES 

I am Ulysses. 

And thou, too, sleeper ? 

Thy voice is sweet. 

It may be that thou hast follow’d 
Through the islands some divine bard, 


54 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

By age taught many things, 

Age and the Muses, 

And heard him delighting 
The chiefs and people 
In the banquet, and learn’d his songs, 

Of Gods and Heroes, 

Of war and arts, 

And peopled cities 
Inland, or built 

By the grey sea.—If so, then hail! 

I honour and welcome thee. 

THE YOUTH 
The Gods are happy. 

They turn on all sides 
Their shining eyes : 

And see, below them, 

The Earth, and men. 

They see Tiresias 
Sitting, staff in hand, 

On the warm, grassy 
Asopus’ bank : 

His robe drawn over 
His old, sightless head : 

Revolving inly 
The doom of Thebes. 

They see the Centaurs 
In the upper glens 
Of Pelion, in the streams, 

Where red-berried ashes fringe 
The clear-brown shallow pools ; 

With streaming flanks, and heads 
Rear’d proudly, snuffing 
The mountain wind. 


55 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

They see the Indian 
Drifting, knife in hand, 

His frail boat moor’d to 
A floating isle thick matted 
With large-leav’d, low-creeping melon-plants, 
And the dark cucumber. 

He reaps, and stows them, 

Drifting—drifting :—round him, 

Round his green harvest-plot, 

Flow the cool lake-waves : 

The mountains ring them. 

They see the Scythian 
On the wide Stepp, unharnessing 
His wheel’d house at noon. 

He tethers his beast down, and makes his meal 
Mare’s milk, and bread 
Baked on the embers : —all around 
The boundless waving grass-plains stretch, thick- 
starr’d 

With saffron and the yellow hollyhock 
And flag-leav’d iris flowers. 

Sitting in his cart 

He makes his meal : before him, for long miles, 
Alive with bright green lizards, 

And the springing bustard fowl, 

The track, a straight black line, 

Furrows the rich soil : here and there 
Clusters of lonely mounds 
Topp’d with rough-hewn 
Grey, rain-blear’d statues, overpeer 
The sunny Waste. 

They see the Ferry 
On the broad, clay-laden 
Lone Chorasmian stream : thereon 
With snort and strain, 


56 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Two horses, strongly swimming, tow 
The ferry-boat, with woven ropes 
To either bow 

Firm-harness’d by the mane :—a chief, 

With shout and shaken spear 
Stands at the prow, and guides them : but astern, 
The cowering Merchants, in long robes, 

Sit pale beside their wealth 
Of silk-bales and of balsam-drops, 

Of gold and ivory, 

Of turquoise-earth and amethyst, 

Jasper and chalcedony, 

And milk-barr’d onyx stones. 

The loaded boat swings groaning 
In the yellow eddies. 

The Gods behold them. 

They see the Heroes 
Sitting in the dark ship 
On the foamless, ong-heaving, 

Violet sea : 

At sunset nearing 
The Happy Islands. 

These things, Ulysses, 

The wise Bards also 
Behold and sing. 

But oh, what labour 1 
O Prince, what pain ! 

They too can see 
Tiresias :—but the Gods, 

Who give them vision, 

Added this law : 

That they should bear too 
His groping blindness, 

His dark foreboding. 


57 



ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

His scorn’d white hairs ; 

Bear Hera’s anger 
Through a life lengthen’d 
To seven ages. 

They see the centaurs 
On Pelion :—then they feel, 

They too, the maddening wine 
Swell their large veins to bursting : in wild pain 
They feel the biting spears 
Of the grim Lapithae, and Theseus, drive, 

Drive crashing through their bones : they feel 
High on a jutting rock in the red stream 
Alcmena’s dreadful son 
Ply his bow : —such a price 
The Gods exact for song ; 

To become what we sing. 

They see the Indian 
On his mountain lake : —but squalls 
Make their skiff reel, and worms 
I’ the unkind spring have gnaw’d 
Their melon-harvest to the heart : They see 
The Scythian :—but long frosts 
Parch them in winter-time on the bare Stepp, 

Till they too fade like grass : they crawl 
Like shadows forth in spring. 

They see the Merchants 
On the Oxus stream : —but care 
Must visit first them too, and make them pale. 

Whether, through whirling sand, 

A cloud of desert robber-horse has burst 
Upon their caravan : or greedy kings, 

In the wall’d cities the way passes through, 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Crush'd them with tolls : or fever-airs, 

On some great river’s marge, 

Mown them down, far from home. 

They see the Heroes 
Near harbour : —but they share 
Their lives, and former violent toil, in Thebes, 
Seven-gated Thebes, or Troy : 

Or where the echoing oars 
Of Argo, first, 

Startled the unknown Sea. 

The old Silenus 
Came, lolling in the sunshine, 

From the dewy forest coverts, 

This way, at noon. 

Sitting by me, while his Fauns 
Down at the water side 
Sprinkled and smooth’d 
His drooping garland, 

He told me these things. 

But I, Ulysses, 

Sitting on the warm steps, 

Looking over the valley, 

All day long, have seen, 

Without pain, without labour, 

Sometimes a wild-hair’d Maenad ; 
Sometimes a Faun with torches ; 

And sometimes, for a moment, 

Passing through the dark stems 
Flowing-robed—the beloved, 

The desired, the divine, 

Beloved Iacchus. 


Ah cool night-wind, tremulous stars ! 
Ah glimmering water— 


59 




ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 


Fitful earth-murmur— 

Dreaming woods ! 

Ah golden-hair’d, strangely-smiling Goddess, 
And thou, proved, much enduring, 
Wave-toss’d Wanderer ! 

Who can stand still ? 

Ye fade, ye swim, ye waver before me. 

The cup again 1 

Faster, faster, 

O Circe, Goddess, 

Let the wild thronging train, 

The bright procession 
Of eddying forms, 

Sweep through my soul 1 


II 


HE ideas which the foregoing pages are 



an attempt to formulate were doubtless 


X developed in Arnold’s mind mainly 
during the years immediately following those 
which he spent at Oxford, where they had their 
origins, one suspects, in conversations with 
Coleridge, Clough and the rest. This excursion 
is, therefore, justified by chronology. 

The external events of the poet’s life during 
the same period can be briefly narrated. Having 
taken a second class in classics, Arnold was in 
1845 elected to a fellowship of Oriel College, 
which, as Mr. Herbert Paul says, was then 
considered “ the most brilliant crown of an 
Oxford career.” He was not, however, content, 
like Pater, to settle down to a don’s life of 
60 



ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

cultured seclusion, and for a few months he 
taught Latin and Greek to the fifth form of his 
old school, then under the sway of Archibald 
Campbell Tait. 

Then, in 1847, he obtained the post of private 
secretary to the Marquess of Lansdowne, who 
at that time sat in Lord John Russell’s cabinet as 
Lord President of the Council. The three years 
during which he held this appointment saw the 
formation of his political opinions, which were 
moulded to a considerable extent on those of 
his chief. Lord Lansdowne was a Whig of a fine 
old type. Arnold, who always called himself a 
Liberal and hoped for a “ final and happy con¬ 
summation . . . the permanent establishment 
of Liberalism in power,” was ever a Whig 
rather than a Radical. His treatment of the 
official Liberals of the day in “ Culture and 
Anarchy ” was drastic from one who was at 
least nominally of their number. He was, in 
fact, a Whig without the true Whig’s sense of 
the importance of the hereditary aristocracy ; 
though, judging by the reason which he gave 
for what he thought was Byron’s superiority 
over Heine, he at one time had something of 
that too. But that phase passed, and though 
he always took an aesthetic pleasure in the 
easy manners of the noblesse, the man who 
dubbed our ruling classes generically “ Bar¬ 
barians ’ ’ cannot be accused of undue reverence 
for a big name. Still, he never became a demo¬ 
crat. 

Very characteristic of the man is the pair of 

61 



ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

sonnets “To a Republican Friend ” (probably 
Clough), which were written in the stirring year 
1848. The first, beginning “ God knows it, I 
am with you,” displays his humanity and fine 
sense of justice and scorn of 

The barren optimistic sophistries 
Of comfortable moles. 

“ Yet,” begins the second, 

Yet, when I muse on what life is, I seem 
Rather to patience prompted, than that proud 
Prospect of hope which France proclaims so loud, 
France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme. 
Seeing this Vale, this Earth, whereon we dream, 

Is on all sides overshadowed by the high 
Uno’erleap'd Mountains of Necessity, 

Sparing us narrower margin than we deem. 

Nor will that day dawn at a human nod, 

When, bursting through the network superposed 
By selfish occupation—plot and plan, 

Lust, avarice, envy—liberated man, 

All difference with his fellow-man composed, 

Shall be left standing face to face with God. 

This attitude of moderation, though not heroic, 
has a nobility of its own. Even in his politics 
Arnold was a classic rather than a romantic. 
The aurea mediocritas was his ideal. In 
July 1849, however, stirred by the heroism of 
Louis Kossuth, he published in the “ Examiner ” 
another sonnet apostrophising Hungary as the 
potential saviour of the world. But even here 
the fervour is a mild thing compared with the 
62 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

fire with which Swinburne would fill a sonnet 
to the same patriot thirty years later ; and when 
after a lapse of ten years, Arnold wrote his 
pamphlet in favour of Italian independence, he 
no longer placed Hungary on a pedestal. 

The sonnet “ To the Hungarian Nation ” 
seems to have been his first published poem. 
As he confessed to his mother, it was “ not 
worth much,” and he did not revive it. But the 
same year witnessed an event of which the 
importance was far from being appreciated at 
the time : the appearance of “ The Strayed 
Reveller and Other Poems ” by 11 A.” 

Matthew Arnold’s poetic gift was not of pre¬ 
cocious development. He was in his twenty- 
seventh year when his first book was published, 
and there is no evidence that any of the poems 
in it were more than a year or two old. It is 
true that at Rugby he had obtained a prize for 
a poem on “ Alaric at Rome, ’ ’ and that at Oxford 
his “ Cromwell ” had won him the Newdigate. 
But winners of the Newdigate do not necessarily 
become famous poets. Arnold does not stand 
out as conspicuously more brilliant than his 
predecessors or successors, though I do not 
agree with Mr. Paul that “ Cromwell ” shows 
a falling-off from the standard of “Alaric at 
Rome.” Both poems are written with much 
{ earnestness and sense of the solemnity of their 
'.subjects, both show the influence of Words- 
e j worth, and both contain a number of good lines. 
e ’The tendency to moralise, conspicuous in 
e “ Alaric at Rome,” was not necessarily sympto- 




ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

matic of the future. In schoolboys’ literature 
there is no mean between moralising and levity. 
Perhaps the most characteristic thing about 
these two productions is that they brought 
academic distinction to Matthew Arnold. They 
certainly do not foreshadow the wealth of 
beauty and thought that were contained in 
the little green book which was issued unob¬ 
trusively and pseudonymously towards the end 
of 1849. 

“ The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems” 
contains a fair proportion of Arnold’s best verse. 
As a first volume, it is remarkable for its qualities 
of maturity and sobriety. The poet may have 
been doing practice work, which he was discreet 
enough to withhold from publicity. Such 
discretion would certainly have been charac¬ 
teristic. It seems, indeed, that he wrote other 
verses at Oxford besides 1 ‘ Cromwell.” “ Here, 
too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay’d,” he 
says in “ Thyrsis.” But before he thought fit 
to publish a book he was full-fledged with all 
his virtues. Technically he never did better 
work than ‘ ‘ Mycerinus ” or “ The Forsaken 
Merman.” He never put deeper thought into 
any poem than he did into “ Resignation.” 

Besides the title-piece, several of the poems 
already quoted or alluded to were in this book. 
“A Memory-Picture” appeared under its 
original name, and it also contained the sonnets 
“To a Friend,” “ To a Republican Friend,” 
“ Quiet Work”; together with some other 
sonnets, including the famous “ Shakespeare.” 
64 





ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

SHAKESPEARE 

Others abide our question. Thou art free. 

We ask and ask : Thou smilest and art still, 
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill 
That to the stars uncrowns his majesty, 

Planting his stedfast footsteps in the sea, 

Making the Heaven of Heavens his dwelling-place, 
Spares but the cloudy border of his base 
To the foil’d searching of mortality : 

And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, 
Self-school’d, self-scann’d, self-honour’d,self-secure, 
Didst walk on Earth unguess’d at. Better so ! 

All pains the immortal spirit must endure, 

AE weakness that impairs, all griefs that bow, 

Find their sole voice in that victorious brow. 

The tenth line is neither good criticism nor 
particularly good poetry ; nor does the whole 
tally with Arnold’s estimate of Shakespeare as 
expressed in prose—which, indeed, like his 
views on a good many things that Englishmen 
treasure, was too qualified for the majority of 
Englishmen to stomach. Such considerations, 
alien as they may be to a discussion of poetic 
merit, must affect our judgment of a work that 
so deliberately challenges them. But the sonnet 
is not quoted merely as a selector’s offering on 
the altar of tradition. The simile that fills the 
middle of it is a piece of imagery unsurpassed 
in the whole range of Arnold’s poetry. 

But to return to the book. The loveliest flowers 
of the collection—in which “ The Sick King in 
Bokhara ” is the only notable failure—are 
e 65 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

three in number: “ The Strayed Reveller,” 
li Mycerinus ” and il The Forsaken Merman.” 
The first of these has already been given. Room 
must be found for both the others. 

The original of “ Mycerinus ” is to be found 
in the pages of Herodotus. The father of 
Mycerinus had ruled the people of Egypt 
tyrannously and lived an evil life. But he endured 
to old age in prosperity. Mycerinus, on the 
other hand, reigned justly and well, endeavour¬ 
ing to atone for his father’s faults ; yet the 
gods decreed that he must die after six years. 
The Egyptians had been doomed to a hundred 
years of oppression, and he had gone against that 
doom. Then Mycerinus vowed that the six years 
given him should be crammed with twelve years’ 
pleasure. Arnold’s poem opens at the moment 
when he is making his decision known to his de¬ 
voted subjects: 

MYCERINUS 

“ Not by the justice that my father spurn’d, 

Not for the thousands whom my father slew, 

Altars unfed and temples overturn’d, 

Cold hearts and thankless tongues, where thanks were 
due ; 

Fell this late voice from lips that cannot lie, 

Stern sentence of the Powers of Destiny. 

“ I will unfold my sentence and my crime. 

My crime, that, rapt in reverential awe, 

I sate obedient, in the fiery prime 
Of youth, self-governed, at the feet of Law ; 
Ennobling this dull pomp, the life of kings, 

By contemplation of diviner things. 

66 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

“ My father lov’d injustice, and liv’d long ; 

Crowned with grey hairs he died, and full of sway. 

I loved the good he scorn’d, and hated wrong : 

The Gods declare my recompense to-day. 

I looked for life more lasting, rule more high ; 

And when six years are measur’d, lo, I die ! 

“Yet surely, O my people, did I deem 
Man’s justice from the all-just Gods was given : 

A light that from some upper fount did beam, 

Some better archetype, whose seat was heaven ; 

A light that, shining from the blest abodes, 

Did shadow somewhat of the life of Gods. 

" Mere phantoms of man’s self-tormenting heart, 
Which on the sweets that woo it dares not feed : 

Vain dreams, that quench our pleasures, then depart, 
When the duped soul, self-mastered, claims its meed ; 
When, on the strenuous just man, Heaven bestows, 
Crown of his struggling life, an unjust close. 

“ Seems it so light a thing then, austere Powers, 

To spurn man’s common lure, life’s pleasant things ? 
Seems there no joy in dances crown’d with flowers, 
Love, free to range, and regal banquetings ? 

Bend ye on these, indeed, an unmoved eye, 

Not Gods but ghosts, in frozen apathy ? 

“ Or is it that some Power, too wise, too strong, 

Even for yourselves to conquer or beguile, 

Whirls earth, and heaven, and men, and gods along, 
Like the broad rushing of the column’d Nile ? 

And the great powers we serve, themselves may be 
Slaves of a tyrannous Necessity ? 


6 ? 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

“ Or in mid-heaven, perhaps, your golden cars, 

Where earthly voice climbs never, wing their flight, 
And in wild hunt, through mazy tracts of stars, 

Sweep in the sounding stillness of the night ? 

Or in deaf ease, on thrones of dazzling sheen, 

Drinking deep draughts of joy, ye dwell serene. 

“ Oh wherefore cheat our youth, if thus it be, 

Of one short joy, one lust, one pleasant dream ? 
Stringing vain words of powers we cannot see, 

Blind divinations of a will supreme ; 

Lost labour : when the circumambient gloom 
But hides, if Gods, Gods careless of our doom ? 

“ The rest I give to joy. Even while I speak 
My sand runs short ; and as yon star-shot ray, 
Hemmed by two banks of cloud, peers pale and weak, 
Now, as the barrier closes, dies away ; 

Even so do past and future intertwine, 

Blotting this six years’ space, which yet is mine. 

“ Six years—six little years—six drops of time— 

Yet suns shall rise, and many moons shall wane, 

And old men die, and young men pass their prime, 
And languid Pleasure fade and flower again ; 

And the dull Gods behold, ere these are flown, 

Revels more deep, joy keener than their own. 

“ Into the silence of the groves and woods 
I will go forth ; but something would I say— 
Something—yet what I know not : for the Gods 
The doom they pass revoke not, nor delay ; 

And prayers, and gifts, and tears, are fruitless all, 

And the night waxes, and the shadows fall. 

68 



ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

“ Ye men of Egypt, ye have heard your king. 

I go, and I return not. But the will 

Of the great Gods is plain ; and ye must bring 

Ill deeds, ill passions, zealous to fulfil 

Their pleasure, to their feet ; and reap their praise, 

The praise of Gods, rich boon ! and length of days.” 

—So spake he, half in anger, half in scorn ; 

And one loud cry of grief and of amaze 
Broke from his sorrowing people : so he spake ; 

And turning, left them there ; and with brief pause, 
Girt with a throng of revellers, bent his way 
To the cool region of the groves he loved. 

There by the river banks he wander’d on, 

From palm-grove on to palm-grove, happy trees, 

Their smooth tops shining sunwards, and beneath 
Burying their unsunn’d stems in grass and flowers : 
Where in one dream the feverish time of Youth 
Plight fade in slumber, and the feet of Joy 
Might wander all day long and never tire : 

Here came the king, holding high feast, at morn 
Rose-crown’d ; and ever, when the sun went down, 

A hundred lamps beam’d in the tranquil gloom, 

From tree to tree, all through the twinkling grove, 
Revealing all the tumult of the feast, 

Flush’d guests, and golden goblets, foam’d with 
wine ; 

While the deep-burnish’d foliage overhead 
Splinter’d the silver arrows of the moon. 

It may be that sometimes his wondering soul 
From the loud joyful laughter of his lips 
Might shrink half startled, like a guilty man 
Who wrestles with his dream ; as some pale Shape, 
Gliding half hidden through the dusky stems, 


69 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Would thrust a hand before the lifted bowl, 
Whispering, “ A little space, and thou art mine.” 

It may be on that joyless feast his eye 

Dwelt with mere outward seeming ; he, within, 

Took measure of his soul, and knew its strength, 

And by that silent knowledge, day by day, 

Was calmed, ennobled, comforted, sustain'd. 

It may be ; but not less his brow was smooth, 

And his clear laugh fled ringing through the gloom, 
And his mirth quail’d not at the mild reproof 
Sigh’d out by Winter’s sad tranquillity ; 

Nor, pall’d with its own fulness, ebb’d and died 
In the rich languor of long summer days ; 

Nor wither’d, when the palm-tree plumes that roof'd 
With their mild dark his grassy banquet-hall, 

Bent to the cold winds of the showerless Spring ; 

No, nor grew dark when Autumn brought the clouds. 

So six long years he revell’d, night and day ; 

And when the mirth wax’d loudest, with dull sound 
Sometimes from the grove’s centre echoes came, 

To tell his wondering people of their king ; 

In the still night, across the streaming flats, 

Mix’d with the murmur of the moving Nile. 

On “ The Forsaken Merman ’ ’ no comment 
is necessary. But it may be recalled that Arnold 
the school-inspector advocated the teaching of 
good poetry even to the youngest children, in 
place of the doggerel from the “ Popular Re¬ 
citers ’ ’ then in vogue. One wonders if it struck 
him that Arnold the poet had written a poem 
better suited than almost any other in the lan¬ 
guage to be put to this admirable use. Not that 
“ The Forsaken Merman ” appeals exclusively 
to children. Like 44 Goblin Market,” it satisfies 
70 





ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

both the child and the maturest critic. Therein 
lies its peculiar charm. 

THE FORSAKEN MERMAN 

Come, dear children, let us away ; 

Down and away below. 

Now my brothers call from the bayi; 

Now the great winds shorewards blow ; 

Now the salt tides seawards flow ; 

Now the wild white horses play, 

Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. 

Children dear, let us away. 

This way, this way. 

Call her once before you go. 

Call once yet. 

In a voice that she will know : 

“ Margaret ! Margaret ! ” 

Children’s voices should be dear 
(Call once more) to a mother’s ear : 

Children’s voices, wild with pain— 

Surely she will come again. 

Call her once and come away. 

This way, this way. 

“ Mother dear, we cannot stay.” 

The wild white horses foam and fret 
Margaret 1 Margaret 1 

Come, dear children, come away down. 

Call no more. 

One last look at the white-wall’d town, 

And the little grey church on the windy shore. 
Then come down. 

She will not come though you call all day. 
Come away, come away. 


7i 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Children dear, was it yesterday 
We heard the sweet bells over the bay ? 

In the caverns where we lay, 

Through the surf and through the swell 
The far-off sound of a silver bell ? 

Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, 

Where the winds are all asleep ; 

Where the spent lights quiver and gleam ; 

Where the salt weed sways in the stream ; 

Where the sea-beasts ranged all round 
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground ; 

Where the sea-snakes coil and twine, 

Dry their mail and bask in the brine ; 

Where great whales come sailing by, 

Sail and sail, with unshut eye, 

Round the world for ever and aye ? 

When did music come this way ? 

Children dear, was it yesterday ? 

Children dear, was it yesterday 
(Call yet once) that she went away ? 

Once she sate with you and me, 

On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea, 
And the youngest sate on her knee. 

She comb’d its bright hair, and she tended it well, 
When down swung the sound of the far-off bell. 

She sigh’d, she look’d up through the clear green sea. 
She said : “I must go, for my kinsfolk pray 
In the little grey church on the shore to-day. 

’Twill be Easter-time in the world—ah me ! 

And I lose my poor soul, Merman, here with thee.” 

I said : “ Go up, dear heart, through the waves. 

Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves.” 
She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay. 
Children dear, was it yesterday ? 


72 



ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Children dear, were we long alone ? 

Zt The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan. 

Long prayers,’* I said, “ in the world they say. 
Come,” I said, and we rose through the surf in the 
bay. 

We went up the beach, by the sandy down 
Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall’d town. 
Through the narrow paved streets, where all was still, 
To the little grey church on the windy hill. 

From the church came a murmur of folk at their 
prayers, 

But we stood without in the cold blowing airs. 

We climb’d on the graves, on the stones, worn with 
rains, 

And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded 
panes. 

She sate by the pillar ; we saw her clear : 

“ Margaret, hist 1 come quick, we are here. 

Dear heart,” I said, “ we are long alone. 

The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.” 

But, ah, she gave me never a look, 

For her eyes were seal’d to the holy book. 

Loud prays the priest ; shut stands the door. 

Come away, children, call no more. 

Come away, come down, call no more. 


Down, down, down. 

Down to the depths of the sea. 

She sits at her wheel in the humming town, 

Singing most joyfully. 

Hark, what she sings : “ 0 joy, O joy, 

For the humming street, and the child with its toy. 
For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well. 

For the wheel where I spun, 

And the blessed light of the sun.” 


73 



ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

And so she sings her fill, 

Singing most joyfully, 

Till the shuttle falls from her hand, 

And the whizzing wheel stands still. 

She steals to the window, and looks at the sand ; 
And over the sand at the sea ; 

And her eyes are set in a stare ; 

And anon there breaks a sigh, 

And anon there drops a tear, 

From a sorrow-clouded eye* 

And a heart sorrow-laden, 

A long, long sigh. 

For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden, 
And the gleam of her golden hair. 

Come away, away children. 

Come children, come down. 

The salt tide rolls seaward. 

Lights shine in the town. 

She will start from her slumber 
When gusts shake the door ; 

She will hear the winds howling, 

Will hear the waves roar. 

We shall see, while above us 
The waves roar and whirl, 

A ceiling of amber, 

A pavement of pearl. 

Singing, “ Here came a mortal, 

But faithless was she. 

And alone dwell for ever 
The kings of the sea.** 

0 

But, children, at midnight, 

When soft the winds blow ; 

When clear falls the moonlight; 

When spring-tides are low : 


74 



ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

When sweet airs come seaward 
From heaths starr’d with broom ; 

And high rocks throw mildly 
On the blanch’d sands a gloom : 

Up the still, glistening beaches, 

Up the creeks we will hie ; 

Over banks of bright seaweed 
The ebb-tide leaves dry. 

We will gaze, from the sand-hills. 

At the white, sleeping town ; 

At the church on the hill-side— 

And then come back down. 

Singing, “ There dwells a loved one, 

But cruel is she. 

She left lonely for ever 
The kings of the sea.” 

It seems incredible that such siren-music 
should have fallen on deaf ears. A society 
properly apprehensive of beauty would have 
been all agog to know who was this clear-voiced 
singer masquerading behind the first letter of 
the alphabet. But interest in the matter was 
conspicuously absent, and 11 The Strayed 
Reveller ” was withdrawn from circulation 
after the sale of a few copies. 

A similar fate befell Arnold’s second volume, 
which, still as “A.,” he put forth in 1852 
under the title of “ Empedocles on Etna 
and Other Poems.” Yet this book contains 
poetry as arresting as any in its forerunner. 
Indeed, in these two volumes are to be found 
practically all the best of the poet’s work, 
with such notable exceptions as “ Sohrab 

75 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

and Rustum,” “ The Scholar Gipsy,” and 
“ Thyrsis.” 

“ Empedocles on Etna,” cast in a very 
undramatic form of drama, is really a long 
philosophical poem interspersed with lyrics. Its 
main feature is the monologue of the Sicilian 
physician and sage, beginning 

The out-spread world to span 
A cord the Gods first slung, 

And then the soul of man 
There, like a mirror hung, 

And bade the winds through space impel the gusty toy. 

This monologue is interesting, though in parts 
a little prosaic. Its counsel of resignation and 
self-examination shows that Arnold, if not 
actually making use of Empedocles as the 
mouthpiece of his own thoughts, was drawn to 
the Sicilian by an affinity of philosophy. But 
the poem is memorable not so much for the 
ideas it contains as for the interjected songs of 
Callicles, the harp-player. Where all are so 
beautiful it is difficult to make a selection, but 
the idyll of Cadmus and Harmonia will illustrate 
their quality as well as another. 

Far, far from here, 

The Adriatic breaks in a warm bay 
Among the green Illyrian hills ; and there 
The sunshine in the happy glens is fair, 

And by the sea, and in the brakes. 

The grass is cool, the sea-side air 
Buoyant and fresh, the mountain flowers 
More virginal and sweet than ours. 


76 




ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

And there, they say, two bright and aged snakes, 
Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia, 

Bask in the glens or on the warm sea-shore, 

In breathless quiet, after all their ills. 

Nor do they see their country, nor the place 
Where the Sphinx liv’d among the frowning hills, 
Nor the unhappy palace of their race, 

Nor Thebes, nor the Ismenus, any more. 

There those two live, far in the Illyrian brakes. 
They had staid long enough to see, 

In Thebes, the billow of calamity 
Over their own dear children roll’d, 

Curse upon curse, pang upon pang, 

For years, they sitting helpless in their home, 

A grey old man and woman : yet of old 
The Gods had to their marriage come, 

And at the banquet all the Muses sang. 

Therefore they did not end their days 
In sight of blood ; but were rapt, far away, 

To where the west wind plays, 

And murmurs of the Adriatic come 
To those untrodden mountain lawns : and there 
Placed safely in changed forms, the Pair 
Wholly forget their first sad life, and home, 

And all that Theban woe, and stray 

For ever through the glens, placid and dumb. 

This is exquisite indeed. But it was in the final 
song that Arnold uttered his unique cry of sheer 
and spontaneous lyric joy : 

Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts, 
Quick breaks the red flame 
All Etna heaves fiercely 
Her forest-clothed frame. 


77 



ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Not here, O Apollo ! 

Are haunts meet for thee. 

But, where Helicon breaks down 
In cliff to the sea. 

Where the moon-silver’d inlets 
Send far their light voice 
Up the still vale of Thisbe, 

O speed, and rejoice t 

On the sward, at the cliff-top, 

Lie strewn the white flocks ; 

On the cliff-side, the pigeons 
Roost deep in the rocks. 

In the moonlight the shepherds, 

Soft lull’d by the rills, 

Lie wrapt in their blankets, 

Asleep on the hills. 

—What Forms are these coming 
So white through the gloom ? 

What garments out-glistening 
The gold-flower’d broom ? 

What sweet-breathing Presence 
Out-perfumes the thyme ? 

What voices enrapture 
The night’s balmy prime ?— 

’Tis Apollo comes leading 
His choir, the Nine. 

—The Leader is fairest, 

But all are divine. 


78 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

They are lost in the hollows, 

They stream up again. 

What seeks on this mountain 
The glorified train ?— 

They bathe on this mountain, 

In the spring by their road. 

Then on to Olympus, 

Their endless abode. 

—Whose praise do they mention, 

Of what is it told |?— 

What will be for ever, 

What was from of old. 

First hymn they the Fathei 
Of all things : and then 
The rest of Immortals, 

The action of men.^ 

The Day in'its hotness, 

The strife with the palm ; 

The Night in its silence, 

The Stars in their calm. 

With this fine poem were published nearly 
all Arnold’s most striking sentimental and moral 
poems : that is to say, the bulk of the lyrics 
subsequently forming “ Switzerland ” and 
* 1 Faded Leaves” ; and “ The Buried Life,” 
“ Self-Dependence,” “ Morality,” and a number 
of kindred pieces, several of which are only 
omitted here for lack of space. The “ Memorial 
Verses ” occasioned by the death of Arnold’s 
master, Wordsworth, and the “ Stanzas in 

7 9 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Memory of the Author of * Obermann,’ ” fore¬ 
shadow the author’s later predilection for elegiac 
themes. But easily the greatest thing in the 
collection, the one poem altogether worthy to 
be set beside * ‘ The Strayed Reveller ’ ’ and 
“ The Forsaken Merman ” of the earlier volume 
or the later “Sohrab and Rustum ” and “The 
Scholar Gipsy,” was “ Tristram and Iseult.” 

There is an interesting passage in a letter of 
Arnold’s written several years after the appear¬ 
ance of this poem. “ The fault I find with 
Tennyson in his ‘ Idylls of the King,’ ” he wrote, 
“ is that the peculiar charm and aroma of the 
Middle Age he does not give them. There is 
something magical about it, and I will do some¬ 
thing with it before I have done.” This promise 
he did not keep, nor can it be said that he put 
anything of the Middle Age into “ Tristram and 
Iseult.” Of the four great modern poets who 
have concerted so incomparable a postscript 
to our national epic cycle, Morris was the only 
one who in any measure reproduced the spirit 
of the original. Tennyson, indeed, got a sugges¬ 
tion of mediaeval magic into “ The Lady of 
Shalott ” and the early “ Morte d’Arthur ” ; 
but he had lost the secret before he wrote the 
“ Idylls.” Swinburne’s “Tale of Balen ” has 
the simplicity and vigour of an older age, but 
his “ Tristram of Lyonesse ” is as modern as 
Meredith’s “ Modern Love.” Arnold’s poem 
also, though very different, is perfectly modern. 

The enormous differences between the two 
nineteenth-century versions of the deathless tale 
bo 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

of Tristram piques one to contrast and compare 
them. They are very typical of their authors, 
the one so exuberant, the other so restrained. 
And it must be confessed that here, in the long 
run, restraint wins. There are, of course, 
passionate lyrics of Swinburne's beside which 
the fires of “ Switzerland ” seem very pale and 
ineffectual. All Arnold’s love-poems together 
would kick the beam if scaled against “ The 
Triumph of Time.” But with these longer, more 
objective poems it is different. Swinburne’s 
“Tristram” is a glowing experience when 
Swinburne is a new enthusiasm. Afterwards 
the memory of it is a possession, but as an expe¬ 
rience it is not to be repeated. One’s ultimate 
judgment is that the poem is magnificent but 
unreadable. 

With Arnold’s “Tristram and Iseult ” the 
case is very different. At the first reading— 
inevitably at a careless reading—it may seem 
a little too low in tone. But a second reading, 
far from being difficult, will call for a third, and 
that for another ; and with every fresh reading 
the poem’s exquisite modesty will yield new 
beauties. 

The poem’s being in the nature of a sketch 
adds to its charm. It is like an exquisite silver- 
point. No attempt is made at a complete story 
of that heroic love. In the first part, “ Tris¬ 
tram,” the knight is already dying ; in the 
second he dies ; in the third he has been dead 
a year. It is very characteristic of Arnold that 
his real heroine is Iseult of Brittany, and not 
f 81 




ARNOLD © HIS POETRY 

Marc’s wife ; also that he makes the marriage 
of Tristram and the younger Iseult fruitful 
instead of the unconsummated union of the 
story. Some of the most beautiful passages in 
the poem are, indeed, concerned with the 
children. 

“ Tristram ” opens with a short dialogue 
between the dying knight, who is expecting 
Iseult of Ireland, and a page who is on the look¬ 
out for her coming ; the rest of the part being a 
monologue in which Tristram recapitulates the 
past, alternating with a commentary which, 
both in metre and in diction, recalls “ Christa- 
bel.” The second part, “ Iseult of Ireland,” is 
a dialogue, in a sonorous and beautiful measure, 
between the great lovers, ending with their 
death together and the reappearance of what 
one might call the chorus The third part, 
“ Iseult of Brittany,” is a lovely idyll, in 
decasyllabic couplets, of the widowed Iseult and 
her children. 

Unfortunately, it is impossible to give the 
whole poem. But in view of Arnold’s own habits 
of incorporation and dismemberment, it is 
permissible to make extracts. Nevertheless, it is 
perhaps best to select passages which are not 
essentially connected with the main theme. 
Each of the three parts ends with a picture 
which is in itself a perfect gem. The first of 
these, which follows on a beautiful descrip¬ 
tion of the children asleep, has a touch of 
the ineffable wonder of Keats’s “ magic case¬ 
ments ” : 

82 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Ah, tired madcaps, you lie still. 

But were you at the window now 
To look forth on the fairy sight 
Of your illumin’d haunts by night ; 

To see the park-glades where you play 
Far lovelier than they are by day ; 

To see the sparkle on the eaves, 

And upon every giant bough 

Of those old oaks, whose wet red leaves 

Are jewell’d with bright drops of rain— 

How would your voices run again ! 

And far beyond the sparkling trees 

Of the castle park one sees 

The bare heaths spreading, clear as day, 

Moor behind moor, far, far away, 

Into the heart of Brittany, 

And here and there, lock’d by the land, 

Long inlets of smooth glittering sea, 

And many a stretch of watery sand 
All shining in the white moon-beams. 

But you see fairer in your dreams. 

There is something of the same quality in the 
second “ end-paper ” : 

The air of the December night 

Steals coldly around the chamber bright, 

Where those lifeless lovers be ; 

Swinging with it, in the light 
Flaps the ghostlike tapestry. 

And on the arras wrought you see 
A stately Huntsman, clad in green, 

And round him a fresh forest-scene. 

On that clear forest-knoll he stays, 

With his pack round him, and delays. 


83 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

He stares and stares, with troubled face, 

At this huge, gleam-lit fireplace, 

At that bright, iron-figured door, 

And those blown rushes on the floor. 

He gazes down into the room 
With heated cheeks and flurried air, 

And to himself he seems to say— 

“ What place is this, and who are they ? 

Who is that kneeling Lady fair ? 

And on his pillows that pale Knight 
Who seems of marble on a tomb ? 

How comes it here, this chamber bright, 
Through whose mullion’d windows clear 
The castle-court all wet with rain, 

The drawbridge and the moat appear, 

And then the beach, and, mark’d with spray, 
The sunken reefs, and far away 
The unquiet bright Atlantic plain ? 

—What, has some glamour made me sleep, 

And sent me with my dogs to sweep, 

By night, with boisterous bugle-peal, 

Through some old, sea-side, knightly hall, 

Not in the free green wood at all ? 

That Knight’s asleep, and at her prayer 
That lady by the bed doth kneel : 

Then hush, thou boisterous bugle-peal 1 ” 

The wild boar rustles in his lair— 

The fierce hounds snuff the tainted air— 

But lord and hounds keep rooted there. 

Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake, 

O Hunter ! and without a fear 
Thy golden-tassell’d bugle blow, 

And through the glades thy pastime take— 
For thou wilt rouse no sleepers here ! 

For these thou seest are unmoved ; 


84 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Cold, cold as those who lived and loved 
A thousand years ago. 

Lastly, we have the story which Iseult of 
Brittany told her children and Tristram’s : 

What tale did Iseult to the children say, 

Under the hollies, that bright winter’s day ? 

She told them of the fairy-haunted land 
Away the other side of Brittany, 

Beyond the heaths, edged by the lonely sea ; 

Of the deep forest-glades of Broce-liande, 

Through whose green boughs the golden sunshine creeps 
Where Merlin by the enchanted thorn-tree sleeps. 

For here he came with the fay Vivian, 

One April, when the warm days first began ; 

He was on foot, and that false fay, his friend, 

On her white palfrey : here he met his end, 

In these lone sylvan glades, that April day. 

This tale of Merlin and the lovely fay 

Was the one Iseult chose, and she brought clear 

Before the children’s fancy him and her. 

Blowing between the stems the forest air 
Had loosen’d the brown curls of Vivian’s hair, 

Which play’d on her flush’d cheek, and her blue eyes 
Sparkled with mocking glee and exercise. 

Her palfrey’s flanks were mired and bathed in sweat, 
For they had travell’d far and not stopp’d yet. 

A briar in that tangled wilderness 

Had scored her white right hand, which she allows 

To rest ungloved on her green riding-dress ; 

The other warded off the drooping boughs. 

But still she chatted on, with her blue eyes 
Fix’d full on Merlin’s face, her stately prize : 


85 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Her ’haviour had the morning’s fresh clear grace, 

The spirit of the woods was in her face ; 

She look’d so witching fair, that learned wight 
Forgot his craft, and his best wits took flight, 

And he grew fond, and eager to obey 
His mistress, use her empire as she may. 


They came to where the brushwood ceased, and day 
Peer’d ’twixt the stems ; and the ground broke away 
In a sloped sward down to a brawling brook, 

And up as high as where they stood to look 
On the brook’s further side was clear ; but then 
The underwood and trees began again. 

This open glen was studded thick with thorns 
Then white with blossom ; and you saw the horns, 
Through the green fern, of the shy fallow-deer 
Which come at noon down to the water here. 

You saw the bright-eyed squirrels dart along 
Under the thorns on the green sward ; and strong 
The blackbird whistled from the dingles near, 

And the light chipping of the woodpecker 
Rang lonelily and sharp : the sky was fair, 

And a fresh breath of spring stirr’d everywhere. 
Merlin and Vivian stopp’d on the slope’s brow 
To gaze on the green sea of leaf and bough 
Which glistering lay all round them, lone and mild, 
As if to itself the quiet forest smiled. 

Upon the brow-top grew a thorn ; and here 
The grass was dry and moss’d, and you saw clear 
Across the hollow : white anemones 
Starr’d the cool turf, and clumps of primroses 
Ran out from the dark underwood behind. 

No fairer resting-place a man could find. 

“ Here let us halt,” said Merlin then ; and she 
Nodded, and tied her palfrey to a tree. 

86 


ARNOLD 6? HIS POETRY 

They sate them down together, and a sleep 
Fell upon Merlin, more like death, so deep. 

Her finger on her lips, then Vivian rose, 

And from her brown-lock’d head the wimple throws, 
And takes it in her hand, and waves it over 
The blossom’d thorn-tree and her sleeping lover. 

Nine times she waved the fluttering wimple round, 
And made a little plot of magic ground. 

And in that daisied circle, as men say, 

Is Merlin prisoner till the judgment-day, 

But she herself whither sfte will can rove, 

For she was passing weary of his love. 

It can hardly be wondered at that a public of 
fifty for such work as this damped Arnold’s 
“genial courage,” as William Cory aptly 
phrased it. 

The discouragement, however, was happily 
transient. Like “The Strayed Reveller,” “Em¬ 
pedocles on Etna ” was withdrawn from circu¬ 
lation, but in the following year, 1853, Arnold 
published, under his own name, a volume con¬ 
taining most of the best of the earlier poems, 
together with a number of new ones. 

The most important omission from this col¬ 
lection was “ Empedocles on Etna ” itself. 
This omission, error in judgment as we may 
think it, is not now to be regretted ; for fourteen 
years later, and at the special request of Robert 
Browning, the poem was restored to the com¬ 
pany of the work which Arnold meant for 
permanence ; and, in the second place, to explain 
his reasons for leaving the poem to languish in 
limbo, the poet wrote a preface which is the 

87 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

earliest and one of the most valuable expressions 
of his critical attitude. 

“ Empedocles on Etna,” he says, belongs to 
that “ class of situations ” “ from the repre¬ 
sentation of which, though accurate, no poetical 
enjoyment can be derived . . . those in which 
the suffering finds no vent in action ; in which 
a continuous state of mental distress is pro¬ 
longed, unrelieved by incident, hope, or resist¬ 
ance ; in which there is everything to be 
endured, nothing to be done.” Human actions 
are the proper theme of poetry, and the most 
excellent actions are those “ which most power¬ 
fully appeal to the great primary human affec¬ 
tions.” Such actions are to be found mainly 
in ancient stories, and if the poet cannot repro¬ 
duce their events accurately in detail, it does 
not matter, since his business is with essentials. 
This, though Arnold does not say so in so many 
words, is the justification of anachronism. The 
action is to be regarded as a whole and not in 
parts ; that is to say, the poem is to follow the 
poet’s full comprehension of his theme, and is 
not to be built from the separate mosaics of his 
fancy. ” All depends upon the subject ; choose 
a fitting action, penetrate yourself with the 
feelings of its situations ; this done, everything 
else will follow.” That is the message which the 
theory of Aristotle, the practice of the Greek 
poets, had for Arnold. Yet the Greeks, concerned 
with their subject rather than with phrase¬ 
making, were masters of the “ grand style.” 
As Arnold wrote in a later essay, “ the superior 
88 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

character of truth and seriousness, in the 
matter of the best poetry, is inseparable from 
the superiority of diction and movement marking 
its style and manner. ’ * 

This preface is an eloquent defence of subject 
against subjectivity, a plea for authority to 
replace the anarchy which Arnold saw around 
him. The highest authorities, in his opinion, 
were the classical poets ; not even Shakespeare 
was so trustworthy, his mastery “ of happy, 
abundant, and ingenious expression ” making 
him a danger to the unwary. Milton, whom, 
curiously enough, Arnold does not mention 
here, was the only English poet who quite came 
up to his idea of what a poet should be. 

The merits of the opinions stated in this 
essay cannot be discussed here. It is the peren¬ 
nial case of classicism against romanticism, 
authority against individualism, which will never 
be decided to every one’s satisfaction. Arnold 
was a thorough-going classicist, but it is not 
impossible that his attitude was to some extent 
the result of reaction. Except in the case of 
Wordsworth, his valuation of poets later than 
Gray was lower than the general. Of his contem¬ 
poraries he was singularly unappreciative. But 
if his letters only commenced ten years earlier 
we might find that he had been in greater sub¬ 
jection to the romantics, more especially to 
Byron, than he afterwards acknowledged. It is 
only a guess, but a certain aroma which clings 
to his own poetry prompts it. In any case, 
though his practice was often as good as his 



ARNOLD © HIS POETRY 

preaching, he is not unscathed by his own 
criticism. Unity, as we have seen, is not the 
predominant characteristic of “ Tristram and 
Iseult.” The felicitous phrase provokes his 
frown ; yet many a single line or couplet of his 
rears its head above its fellows : “ France, 

famed in all great arts, in none supreme ” ; 
“ Who saw life steadily and saw it whole ” ; 
“ his sad lucidity of soul ” ; 

Still nursing the unconquerable hope, 

Still clutching the inviolable shade ; 

and 

Eyes too expressive to be blue, 

Too lovely to be grey. 

These are familiar to many who could not 
repeat a word of their contexts. “ Arnold’s 
jewel-work is bright,” Mr. Andrew Lang once 
wrote ; and though he wrote it in the envoy of 
a ballade, it is an accurate statement. More¬ 
over, Arnold once quoted a single line of Chaucer 
as sufficient evidence of the poet’s quality. 
Lastly, in matters of metre at all events, he was 
not altogether guiltless of that “ caprice ” which 
he calls the ‘ ‘ eternal enemy. ’ ’ 

“ Sohrab and Rustum,” however, the chief 
of the new poems in the volume of 1853, is an 
admirable example of what fine work can be 
done without transgressing classic laws. Based 
on the Persian story of a single combat in which 
a father, an Achillean warrior, slays his son 
unwittingly, it is a perfect epic in miniature. 
Here, certainly, is a unity which defies quota- 
90 



ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

tion. But action and atmosphere are alike en¬ 
tirely adequate, and the pity of the story is 
most poignantly realised. The writing of this 
poem gave Arnold peculiar pleasure, as well 
it might. 

Among the other fresh pieces were “ The 
Scholar Gipsy ” ; “ The Church of Brou,” with 
the fine description of the tombs ; Arnold’s 
loveliest lyric, “ Requiescat ” ; “ Philomela,” 
athrob with beauty; and “ The Neckan,” 
which shows the poet still attracted by the soul¬ 
less people of the sea. 

The “ Poems ” of 1853 were followed, at an 
interval of two years, by “Poems, second series,” 
containing a further selection from the two 
anonymous volumes, together with “ Balder 
Dead.” Arnold’s second long narrative in blank 
verse has not quite the same attraction as 
“ Sohrab and Rustum.” It is more remote from 
the sphere of our sorrow. Nevertheless it is, in 
its way, as fine an achievement. The chill grey 
atmosphere, the northern gloom and the sense of 
desolation accompanying the death of a god are 
rendered with mastery. 

Ill 

M EANWHILE two events, closely con¬ 
nected the one with the other, had taken 
place, both of which were of great import¬ 
ance in Arnold’s life. Early in 1851—between 
the publication of his first and second volume—he 
received, at the hands of Lord Lansdowne, an 

91 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

appointment as Inspector of Schools. Just two 
months later, June io, he married Frances Lucy 
Wightman, the daughter of Mr. Justice Wight- 
man : a typical middle-class marriage, he called 
it, a schoolmaster’s son to a judge’s daughter. 
He used to go on circuit as his father-in-law’s 
marshal, taking an artistic pleasure in the 
judge’s administration of the law. 

Middle-class or not, Matthew Arnold’s mar¬ 
riage was supremely happy. Himself the most 
lovable of men, he was devoted to “ Flu ” (as 
he always wrote of her) and to the children she 
bore him. The charm of his letters, disappoint¬ 
ing from a more literary point of view, lies in 
their domestic idyllism. Clouds there were, no 
doubt, poignant sorrow for the untimely death 
of three of his sons, yet he never, one imagines, 
regretted the sacrifice his marriage cost him. 

For at the time there was certainly an element 
of sacrifice about his acceptance of the inspector¬ 
ship. Such work was not his choice. No 
doubt he had hoped that a secretaryship to the 
Lord President of the Council would lead to 
higher things. It is believed that he would have 
liked to enter the Diplomatic Service, for which, 
by his personality, his interest in foreign politics 
and literature, and his love of continental life, 
he was eminently suited. He always longed to 
live abroad, in France or Switzerland or, later, in 
Italy. 11 All this afternoon,” he wrote to his 
wife when inspecting schools in Sudbury in 
1853, “ I have been haunted by a vision of 
living with you at Berne, in a diplomatic 
92 


ARNOLD fif HIS POETRY 

appointment, and how different that would be 
from this incessant grind in schools ; but I 
could laugh at myself, too, for the way in which 
I went on drawing out our life in my mind.” 
As a diplomatist he would probably have risen 
high. Later, in connection with his work, he 
was several times sent abroad on semi-diplomatic 
missions, which he conducted with conspicuous 
success ; leaving a permanent record thereof in 
il A French Eton,” * 1 Schools and Universities 
on the Continent,” and other works. 

But if Arnold wanted to live abroad, he 
wanted to live there with Frances Lucy Wight- 
man. For a poor man the two desires were not 
both attainable. He had to choose between 
them, and he chose wisely. 

None the less, at first he frankly detested his 
new work. As there were at that time only two 
other men in England who held similar appoint¬ 
ments, his beat was wide, carrying him across 
the face of England from Pembroke Dock to 
Great Yarmouth. His existence, in fact, was 
not far removed from that of the bagman— 
a sort of prosaic and provincial wanderjahre. 
Sometimes his wife went with him : one of 
their children was born in lodgings at Derby. 
At other times he travelled alone and wrote 
Mrs. Arnold dryly humorous accounts of his 
adventures. One is struck by the frequency 
with which he was reduced to lunching on 
buns. 

But as time went on he took more kindly to 
the work which was to occupy thirty-five years 

93 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

of his life. He had a natural sympathy and 
understanding for children (which doubtless 
developed with his own fatherhood), and his 
courtesy and consideration gave him immense 
popularity with teachers of either sex. Nor was 
it possible that an Arnold, of all men, should 
come in contact with education and remain 
indifferent . 1 

So it came to pass that an occupation which 
had at first been naturally uncongenial to a 
poet became not only a source of interest to 
himself, but of profit to his country. Arnold 
developed into a wise and expert educationalist. 
Many of the reforms he advocated have since 
been carried out : compulsory education under 
local administration, for example ; though, 
with his usual logic, he wished the compulsion 
to be universal and not applied to one particular 
class. He wished the universities, which he 
found too much like mere sequels to the public 
schools, and the public schools, which he con¬ 
sidered lost in their playgrounds, to be put under 
State control. The private schools he would 
have starved out of existence. With regard to 
actual curricula, he thought that the rudiments 
of science should be taught in the elementary 
schools ; though he very naturally gave most 
importance to literature. He was characteris¬ 
tically insistent on the literary value of the 
Bible, and he himself edited the last twenty- 

1 Of Matthew Arnold’s brothers, Thomas was a professor in 
University College, Dublin; Edward Penrose an inspector of 
schools, and William Delafield director of public instruction in the 
Punjab. 

94 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

seven chapters of “ Isaiah ” as “ A Bible 
Reading for Schools,” which, however, was 
never used for that purpose. He even recom¬ 
mended that the higher forms in the elementary 
schools should be taught Latin from the Vul¬ 
gate. His reason, I suppose, might be given 
much in the words with which Mr. Hilaire 
Belloc explains the bilingual nature of a song 
in “ The Path to Rome.” “ If you ask me why 
I put a Latin line at the end, it was because I 
had to show that it was a song connected with 
the Universal Fountain and with European 
culture, and with all that Heresy combats.” 
From Mr. Belloc’s point of view, of course, 
Arnold was himself a heretic ; but for the 
particular brand of heresy known as noncon¬ 
formity contact had given him an aversion 
which tended to become an obsession. And as 
for the universal fountain and European culture 
—culture, “ to know ourselves and the world,” 
was for Arnold the aim and object of education. 

Such questions, of course, are of immense 
importance and interest, but unfortunately 
Matthew Arnold, as he became absorbed in 
them, wrote less and less poetry. After the 
publication of “ Poems ” in 1853 Lord John 
Russell had remarked that “ in his opinion 
Matthew Arnold was the one rising young poet 
of the present day.” This was perfectly true, 
except for the word “ rising.” Arnold had 
already reached his high-water mark. “ Balder 
Dead” was yet to come, then “ Merope,” 
‘Thyrsis,” and the “New Poems” of 1867, 

95 



ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

and, many years afterwards, the magnificent 
“ Westminster Abbey.” But this, as the pro¬ 
duction of thirty-five years, was not much. 

The truth is, of course, that his duties left 
him little leisure. “ I think I shall be able to 
do something more in time,” he wrote in April 
1856, “ but am sadly bothered and hindered at 
present, and that puts one in deprimirter 
Stimmung , which is a fatal thing.” An obvious 
comment on this is that many of his poems were 
certainly written in deprimirter Stimmung and 
this suggests another reason for the gradual 
cooling of his Muse. His marriage and his new 
interests had taught him the value of happiness, 
and he was not of that exuberant nature which 
puts happiness into verse. When he was again 
“ able to do something ” he did it mainly in 
prose. 

A year after the letter just quoted was written, 
however, Arnold’s connection with poetry was 
made official. He was elected to the professor¬ 
ship of Poetry at Oxford, the first layman to 
occupy the chair since its inauguration half a 
century before. This appointment was the 
occasion of his most unfortunate poetic venture. 
In order to vindicate his championship of classi¬ 
cism, which had again been his theme in his 
inaugural lecture “ The Modern Element in 
Literature,” he composed and published “ Me- 
rope,” dreariest of blank-verse dramas in an 
age of dreary blank-verse dramas. 

Perhaps he was overwhelmed by his pro¬ 
fessorship, though one would scarcely have 
96 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

expected Matthew Arnold to be discountenanced 
by that. His mastery of blank verse had already 
been displayed in “ Sohrab and Rustum ” and 
il Balder Dead.” The author of “ The Strayed 
Reveller ” ought at least to have been able to 
produce a creditable imitation of the Greek 
chorus. Moreover, he had once written an 
admirable “Fragment of an ‘ Antigone ’.” 
Yet “ Merope ” had not even the galvanised 
life which skilled hands occasionally put into 
such archaisms. Professor Dowden has well 
described it as “a death-mask, not without a 
certain dignity, taken from the face of Greek 
tragedy.’* Only one of the characters, Poly- 
phontes the king, shows any semblance of life, 
and even his vitality is feeble and intermittent. 
Arnold’s own belief in the play is almost pathetic. 
Probably he was the only person who sincerely 
thought it finer than “ Atalanta in Calydon,” 
which, seven years after the publication of 
“ Merope,” established its author’s fame as a 
poet. Once more a comparison between Arnold 
and Swinburne suggests itself. This time the 
older poet can only be allowed the doubtful 
advantage of having followed with more slavish 
accuracy the mechanism of his models. In all 
other respects he is immeasurably inferior. 

Arnold’s Oxford professorship, to which he 
was re-elected in 1862 for a second period of 
five years, is chiefly memorable for two courses 
of lectures, that on translating Homer and that 
on the study of Celtic literature. The former, in 
which appear for the first time the most salient 
g 97 


ARNOLD © HIS POETRY 

characteristics of Arnold’s prose, his tendency 
to banter and that trick of repetition which, 
when not overdone, gave his style so admirable 
a lucidity, was the occasion of a controversy 
with Francis Newman, the cardinal’s brother, 
whose recent translation of Homer the lecturer 
criticised. These lectures are still good to read, 
though they have not, until lately, made many 
converts to their author’s point of view. His 
contention that the test of a translation should 
be its appeal to Greek scholars with an appre¬ 
ciation of poetry was sound, but when he went 
on to affirm that the English hexameter was the 
metre in which Homer should be rendered, it 
must be admitted that the evidence supplied by 
former experiments in that measure was over¬ 
whelmingly against him. Nor did his own halting 
efforts, with which he illustrated his argument, 
do much to help his case. Quite recently, how¬ 
ever, a translation of the “Odyssey” has been 
made in the original measure, 1 which has been 
hailed by scholars as the most satisfying render¬ 
ing of the great poem. Thus, after many years, 
Arnold’s wisdom, here as in other cases, has 
been vindicated against the criticism of prejudice. 

Of Arnold’s appearance and manner when 
delivering these lectures Mr. George Russell 
has etched a vignette, which I take the liberty 
to quote : “ Few are those who can still re¬ 

call the graceful figure in its silken gown, 
the gracious address, the slightly supercilious 
smile of the Milton jeune et voyageant , just 

1 By Mr. H. B. CotteriU. 


98 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

returned from contact with all that was best in 
French culture to instruct and astonish his own 
University ; few who can still catch the cadence 
of the opening sentence : ‘ It has more than 
once been suggested to me that I should trans¬ 
late Homer * ; few that heard the fine tribute 
of the aged scholar who, as the young lecturer 
closed a later discourse, murmured to himself, 
1 The Angel ended.’ ” 1 This aged scholar was 
Dr. Williams, Principal of Jesus College, and it 
was George Sand who had called Arnold the 
Milton jeune et voyageant. During a recent 
visit to France he had met not only George 
Sand, but Prosper Merimee and Sainte-Beuve, 
his master in criticism, whose influence is 
: clearly to be seen in “ Essays in Criticism,” 
which were published a few years later. 

The lectures on the study of Celtic literature, 
cited as the second memorable event of Arnold’s 
professorship, were the last he delivered before 
he vacated the chair. One remarkable thing 
about them is that they were delivered by a man 
who was entirely ignorant of any of the Celtic 
tongues ; another is the amount of imaginative 
insight which, in spite of this ignorance, the 
lecturer displayed. Bored with watching the 
Liverpool steamboats, during a holiday at 
Llandudno, Arnold had turned his monocle 
inland. The result of his desultory investigations 
of Welsh traditions was a course of lectures 
which are still fresh after forty years ; which, 
indeed, that learned Celtic student, Mr. Alfred 

1 Russell: “ Matthew Arnold,” p. 36 . 


99 







ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Nutt, thought it worth while to re-edit shortly 
before his tragic death. “ Only men of genius 
can do these things,” as Mr. Herbert Paul says. 

The year 1867, however, is more significant 
to us for the publication of “ New Poems” 
than for the publication of “On the Study of 
Celtic Literature.” 

Besides “ Empedocles on Etna,” at last 
restored to accessibility by Browning’s request, 
“ New Poems ” contained the harvest, meagre 
in bulk if not in quality, of a dozen years. 
“ Thyrsis,” the masterpiece of the collection, 
had appeared in 1865, “ Rugby Chapel ” was 
written in ’57, “ Haworth Churchyard ” in ’55, 
while “ Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse ” 
dates from the same year. The famous lines in 
the last— 

Wandering between two worlds, one dead, 

The other powerless to be born, 

With nowhere yet to rest my head 

—were written in a mood which the poet was 
soon to show he had outlived. As a motto for 
the volume Arnold put the following quatrain: 

Though the Muse be gone away, 

Though she move not earth to-day, 

Souls, erewhile who caught her word, 

Ah I still harp on what they heard. 

The lines were appropriate. Arnold’s later 
poetry is largely retrospective. Always a reflec¬ 
tive, often a didactic, poet, he uttered the purely 
lyrical note less and less frequently as time went 
100 




ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

on. When he tries to write a love-poem, as in 
“Calais Sands,” he is far more rhetorical than 
he ever was in “ Switzerland ” ; or when he 
stands beside his love on Dover Beach he thinks 
of Sophocles and the Sea of Faith. Nevertheless, 
“ Dover Beach ” is a poem both fine in itself 
and interesting as indicating a phase of the 
poet’s spiritual development. 

DOVER BEACH 

The sea is calm to-night. 

The tide is full, the moon lies fair 
Upon the straits ;—on the French coast the light 
Gleams and is gone ; the cliffs of England stand, 
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. 

Come to the window, sweet is the night air 1 

Only, from the long line of spray 

Where the sea meets the moon-blanch’d land, 

Listen ! you hear the grating roar 

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, 

At their return, up the high strand, 

Begin, and cease, and then again begin, 

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 
The eternal note of sadness in. 

Sophocles long ago 

Heard it on the ASgean, and it brought 
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow 
Of human misery ; we 
Find also in the sound a thought, 

Hearing it by this distant northern sea. 

The Sea of Faith 

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore 

zoi 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. 

But now I only hear 

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 

Retreating, to the breath 

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear 

And naked shingles of the world. 

Ah, love, let us be true 

To one another ! for the world, which seems 
To lie before us like a land of dreams, 

So various, so beautiful, so new, 

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain ; 

And we are here as on a darkling plain 

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 

Where ignorant armies clash by night. 

“ Bacchanalia, or the New Age,” a poem of 
much beauty, shows the poet as happier to 
contemplate the past than to share in the busy 
present. 11 Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse '' 
draws a poignant comparison between the calm 
life of the monks and the doubt-wracked outer 
world. Notable among other poems in the 
volume are the elegies : “ Rugby Chapel,” the 
fine lines on Dr. Arnold already quoted from ; 
“ Heine's Grave,” with its picture of England 
as the “ weary Titan ” ; “ Haworth Church¬ 

yard,” in memory of the Bronte sisters ; and, 
of course, “ Thyrsis.” 

There is no denying the fact that a certain 
element of prose has crept into these “ New 
Poems.” Arnold’s earlier work, conformable 
as it was to his own questionable definition of 
102 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

poetry, was (with the exception of a few sonnets) 
at least critical only of the permanent essentials 
of life. No poetry could be of more general 
application than “ Morality ” or “Self-Depen¬ 
dence.” But, as time went on, the imperfections 
of his own age took up more and more of his 
attention. The “ Grande Chartreuse,” “ Rugby 
Chapel,” “ Heine’s Grave ”—these and others 
betray his preoccupations. He narrowed his 
scope and became the less a poet. The year 
1867 might be taken as the date at which Arnold 
the poet and critic of essentials became Arnold 
the prose-writer and critic of his time. The 
division, of course, is rough. His pamphlet on 
the Italian question, on the one hand, and 
“ Westminster Abbey ” on the other, are sadly 
out of place. Moreover, a certain amount that 
is ephemeral and opinionative may be found 
in the early poems, and much more that is 
eternal truth in the later prose. 

With this prose we are not directly concerned. 
Arnold the poet is our theme. But since Arnold 
the man is also relevant, and since his prose 
was the chief work of the last twenty years of 
his life, it cannot be altogether ignored. Besides, 
the two forms of literature in his case, as in the 
case of all others who have employed both, lend 
themselves to comparison and mutual illumina¬ 
tion. The obvious contrast between them—the 
melancholy of the poetry and the cheerfulness 
of the prose—is due to precisely the same causes 
as made him desert one for the other. He had 
learned the value of happiness. He had found 

103 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

his proper attitude towards life. When he 
returned to verse, he was remembering his 
youth, or paying tribute to a friend, a master 
or, ultimately, a pet. 

Of the respective values of Arnold’s prose and 
verse there can be no question. There are people 
who think that the former, with the exception 
of “ Essays in Criticism,” is already dead, 
while to me ” Culture and Anarchy,” at any 
rate, seems as alive and as pertinent as it ever 
was. 1 But there is a point of poetic achievement 
which, being reached, relegates the finest prose 
work to a secondary place : perhaps even 
Meredith will eventually be remembered as the 
author of “ Modern Love.” To that point 
Matthew Arnold attained time and again. 

During his professorship, the duties attached 
to which were not burdensome, Arnold had, of 
course, continued his work as inspector of 
schools. But education and literature did not 
take the whole of his attention. The significance 
of both, in fact, was for him as means to an end. 
And that end he called culture. 

“ Essays in Criticism,” the publication of 
which in 1865 was a landmark in the history 
of English criticism, was a sequel, with just 
the amount of development to be expected after 
twelve years, to the preface of 1853, and it was 

1 Surely it is no mere flight of fancy to see the influence of “ Culture 
and Anarchy ” in one of the most modern of recent novels, Mr. 
H. G. Wells’s “New Machiavelli." Richard Remington’s ultimate 
opinions bear a strong resemblance to Arnold’s, and his favourite 
phrase, “love and fine thinking,” is at least reminiscent of “sweet¬ 
ness and light.” 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

also a preliminary to “ Culture and Anarchy.” 
In the essay on Heine, the Philistine first makes 
his appearance ; in that on the “ Literary 
Influence of Academies ” authority in literature 
is upheld and anarchy condemned ; in that on 
the function of criticism it is pointed out that 
the time was essentially critical but that it was 
possible deliberately to prepare for an age of 
creation. In the preface, which contains the 
beautiful tribute to Oxford already quoted, the 
essence of Arnold’s philosophy, as he expounded 
it a few years later, is given in a few eloquent 
lines : “ To try and approach truth on one side 
after another, not to strive or cry, nor to persist 
in pressing forward, on any one side, with vio¬ 
lence and self-will—it is only thus, it seems to me, 
that mortals may hope to gain any vision of the 
mysterious Goddess, whom we shall never see 
except in outline, but only thus even in outline.” 

This agnostic idealism, tempered by the 
optimism which defined God as a “ stream of 
tendency, not ourselves, which makes for 
righteousness,” seemed to Arnold to be as near 
as one could get to a definite creed. Naturally, 
therefore, he thought that much was wrong 
with an age which, taking its moral values as 
fixed, devoted its attention to getting material 
things done. Hence his plea for criticism, “ a 
disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate 
the best that is known in the world.” “ Sweet¬ 
ness and light,” a phrase borrowed from Swift, 
were the qualities which culture would stimu¬ 
late. England was too Hebrew ; it must become 

105 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

more Greek. The spirit of free inquiry must be 
given full play. Such was the nature of a book 
which, in spite of some faults of prejudice, 
deserves to be considered the Bible of true 
Liberalism. 

44 Culture and Anarchy ” was followed by 
44 Friendship’s Garland,” an exquisite satire 
written in the person of Arminius von Thunder- 
ten-Tronckh, whose name was borrowed from 
Voltaire’s 44 Candide.” Before these papers had 
appeared in book form, however, Arnold had 
turned his attention from politics to theology. 
44 Saint Paul and Protestantism ” was published 
in 1870, to be followed at intervals by 44 Litera¬ 
ture and Dogma,” 44 God and the Bible,” and 
44 Last Essays on Church and Religion.” 

44 To disengage the religion of England from 
unscriptural Protestantism, political dissent, 
and a spirit of watchful jealousy,” was Arnold’s 
comparatively innocent intention in 44 St. Paul 
and Protestantism.” But he soon went further 
than that, offering for the anthropomorphic 
deity of the orthodox a 44 stream of tendency,” 
and for Christian dogma 44 morality touched 
with emotion.” 

These matters are altogether outside our 
scope, except in so far as they are illustrated 
in the poems. Arnold’s fundamentally religious 
nature is evident in almost every line of verse 
he wrote. His reverence for the spirit of Chris¬ 
tianity was profound, and in his hatred of 
nonconformity, or mere negation, he even 
upheld the Establishment. There was nothing 
106 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

he detested more than unethical materialism * 
and he would probably have preferred that 
Darwin had never been born than that that 
should have been the result of his discoveries. 
This is clearly expressed in the vehement little 
poem “ Pis-aller.” If a man cannot find the 
kingdom of God within him, it is better that he 
should find it without than not at all. 

PIS-ALLER 

“ Man is blind because of sin, 

Revelation makes him sure ; 

Without that, who looks within, 

Looks in vain, for all’s obscure.” 

Nay, look closer into man ! 

Tell me, can you find indeed 
Nothing sure, no moral plan 
Clear prescribed, without your creed ? 

il No, I nothing can perceive 1 
Without that, all’s dark for men. 

That, or nothing, I believe.”— 

For God’s sake, believe it then ! 

But Arnold himself was a living proof that a 
man can be good, in the highest sense that 
the word can possibly be given, without the help 
of dogma. Heterodox he certainly was ; that 
he was irreligious, even from a Christian stand¬ 
point, is eternally gainsaid by that fine series 
of later sonnets, “ The Better Part,” “The 
Divinity,” ‘* Immortality,” “TheGood Shepherd 
with the Kid,” and “ Monica’s Last Prayer.” 

107 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

The facts of Arnold’s latter years may be 
stated in a very few words. His was at no time 
an eventful life. The routine work of an inspector 
of schools does not afford material for thrilling 
biography. In Arnold’s case, it is true, the 
routine was several times broken in a pleasant 
fashion. In January 1859 he was sent abroad 
as Foreign Assistant Commissioner on Educa¬ 
tion to visit France, Holland, Belgium, Switzer¬ 
land, and Piedmont. He liked his errand 
immensely, especially the French part of it, and 
obtained materials not only for his official 
report but also for his “ French Eton,” an 
account of the Lyceum at Toulouse. Subsequent 
missions of a similar nature took him to France 
again, to Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. 
Over him, as over so many English poets, Italy 
cast her spell. 

Arnold’s work for education, whether in col¬ 
lecting data abroad or suggesting improvements 
at home, is of acknowledged value. We have seen 
how his original distaste for it was gradually 
transmuted into keen interest. It was not his 
fault, however, that his inspectorship was not 
curtailed to less than half its actual length. 
In 1867 he applied for the post of librarian to 
the House of Commons, but, in spite of Disraeli’s 
support, he was unsuccessful. 

His applications for Government appointments 
were not, indeed, crowned with success. In 
1866 he had tried for a commissionership of 
charities, but had been told that the post was 
for a lawyer. When he applied for a similar 
10S 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

position in 1882 he was once more refused. 
On this occasion, if not on the former, it was 
Gladstone who stood in the way. Between 
Arnold and the great statesman there was little 
mutual admiration. Gladstone, of course, 
detested Arnold’s theology, while Arnold had 
not the highest opinion of Gladstone’s political 
ability. In 1883, however, the one offered and 
the other, after some hesitation, accepted a 
Civil List pension of £250 “as a public recog¬ 
nition of service to the poetry and literature of 
England.” 

As far as poetry was concerned Matthew 
Arnold, as has been said, had long been doing 
his country but scanty service. There are only 
four pieces grouped under the heading 11 Later 
Poems ” in his complete works. And of these 
only one really matters. The verses about his 
dogs and his canary, excellent for domestic 
circulation and pleasantly indicative of happy 
home-life, scarcely seem planned for immor¬ 
tality, though “ Poor Matthias ” has such neat 
lines as 

Cruel, but composed and bland, 

Dumb, inscrutable and grand, 

So Tiberius might have sat, 

Had Tiberius been a cat. 

Still they do not proclaim their author the 
peer of Catullus, the supreme pet-elegist. 

But 11 Westminster Abbey,” written on the 
death of Arnold’s old friend Dean Stanley, is 
another matter. In spite of the characteristic 

109 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

touch of criticism in the antepenultimate 
stanza, which makes a slight discord in what 
were otherwise perfect harmony, it is indeed a 
“ solemn music,” not in any way made ashamed 
by the invariable, if not inevitable, comparison 
with Milton’s “ Nativity Ode.” 11 Westminster 
Abbey ” is one of the very finest flowers of 
Arnold’s genius, which, after a sleep of fifteen 
years, woke at the summons of a worthy theme 
to this final and splendid manifestation of its 
power. 

A year before the offer of the pension Arnold 
had already talked of retiring. “ I have no wish 
to execute the Dance of Death in an elementary 
school,” he wrote. But it was not until April 
1886 that he actually sent in his resignation, 
after a final errand of inquiry on the Continent 
and a lecturing tour in America on his own 
account. Two years later, April 15, 1888, he 
died. He had gone to Liverpool with his wife 
to meet their elder daughter, who was returning 
from America. Running to catch a tramcar 
he overtaxed a weak heart and died instantly. 
He was buried where he was born, at Laleham. 

IV 

O F all the great Victorian writers Matthew 
Arnold is, perhaps, the one whom it would 
have been most satisfactory to know 
personally. There would, at any rate, have been 
no disillusion in such knowledge. The testimony 
to his rare charm is unanimous, 
no 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

There was nothing about him that suggested 
the poet’s traditional pose ; no unshorn locks 
or air of mystery. Like Browning, he was a 
man of the world : gay, courteous, social, a 
raconteur, a judge of wine, a lover of field- 
sports. His strange failure to appreciate the 
work of his contemporaries was certainly not due 
to jealousy, for in his personal relations he was 
always kindly and generous. Naturally prone 
to sarcasm, he was never bitter. Any sharpness 
of tongue was more than nullified by the sweet¬ 
ness of his smile. The ideal terms on which he 
lived with his family, his signal domestic happi¬ 
ness, the duration of his friendships, all testify 
to his goodness and his lovability. Lord Salis¬ 
bury, who as Chancellor of Oxford conferred 
an honorary degree on Arnold, said afterwards, 
referring to the famous phrase in “ Culture and 
Anarchy,” that he ought to have addressed 
him as vir dulcissime et lucidissime. No form of 
address could have been more appropriate. 

It would be quite futile to try to assign Arnold 
an exact position in the ranks of English poets, 
or even among his contemporaries. Within 
certain limits such valuations are purely matters 
of taste. But it may be affirmed, without much 
fear of contradiction, that he stands among the 
first three or four of the Victorians. In one 
respect or another he was doubtless surpassed 
by each of those whom this generic description 
calls most forcibly to mind. For sheer creative 
power Browning was enormously his superior. 
Tennyson excelled him in delicate craftsman- 

ni 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

ship of words and subtle coloration, Swinburne 
in splendour and fervour. But Arnold’s poetry 
has a certain quality, as of clear water welling 
from a deep spring, which is his alone. Not for 
nothing was he a devout classicist. It gives him 
the claim to be named, in certain aspects, in 
the same breath with Milton and no other of 
his countrymen. 

Thus, if he is inferior in one direction, he is 
superior in another. And it is very much a 
matter of taste which one considers the best 
direction to follow. For poetry, though it can 
be many other things, must always be a personal 
expression. The great thing is that the expres¬ 
sion should be adequate and the personality 
admirable. Arnold’s personality, as an attempt 
has been made to show in the foregoing 
pages, was of the highest. Few men probably 
have better deserved to be described as noble. 
To say that he had limitations is to say that 
he was a man. To say that he could not write 
passionate love poetry is to say that he was 
Arnold, not Swinburne ; though to be rhetorical, 
as he sometimes was, is always a fault in poetry. 
An artist is to be blamed, not for having limita¬ 
tions, but for not knowing them. But that 
Arnold was capable of passion of another kind is 
undisputably proven by such poems as “ Pis- 
aller ” and “ Dover Beach.” He had a passion 
for the “ good life.” 

This leads to another question : whether 
Arnold the moralist spoilt Arnold the poet. The 
contention that art and morality cannot keep 
112 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

company is stultified by a good deal of the finest 
poetry ever written. If a poet chooses to put 
moral sentiments into his verse, who are the 
little critics to say him nay ? The price he pays 
is that he challenges two judgments instead of 
one. Is the moral in verse good morality ? Is 
the moral poem good art ? Of Arnold’s morality, 
as expressed in verse, something has been said. 
As to the artistic value of his moral poems, while 
there are undoubtedly a few of them which 
would have been better as essays, one has only 
to refer to “ Morality,” to “ Self-Dependence,” 
or to certain sonnets, for evidence that the poet’s 
ethics did not necessarily spoil his art. 

Nevertheless, Arnold’s most beautiful work is 
to be found in his more purely artistic creations 
—poems wherein, though ideas are never 
lacking, he is not primarily didactic. Such 
poems are ” The Strayed Reveller, “ The Scholar 
Gipsy,” “ Thyrsis,” “ The Forsaken Merman,” 
“ Westminster Abbey ” ; such are the songs in 
“ Empedocles ” ; and such is that exquisite 
lyric “ Requiescat,” where gravity of thought 
and lightness of hand are brought into so 
perfect a unison. 

REQUIESCAT 

Strew on her roses, roses, 

And never a spray of yew. 

In quiet she reposes : 

Ah ! would that I did too. 

Her mirth the world required : 

She bathed it in smiles of glee 

h 113 






ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

But her heart was tired, tired, 

And now they let hex be. 

Her life was turning, turning, 

In mazes of heat and sound. 

But for peace her soul was yearning, 

And now peace laps her round. 

Her cabin’d, ample Spirit, 

t It flutter’d and fail’d for breath. 

To-night it doth inherit 
The vasty Hall of Death. 

After that, it is almost superfluous to insist 
on the technical excellence, the adequacy of 
expression, of most of the poet’s work. u The 
Scholar Gipsy,” “The Forsaken Merman,” 
4 * Westminster Abbey” may again be called 
in, if necessary ; and “ Sohrab and Rustum ” 
for the beauty and dignity of his blank verse ; 
and a dozen sonnets for his skill as a sonneteer. 
One practice of his has, however, been much 
criticised : the practice of writing poems in 
lines without either rhyme or metre. It is true 
that this sort of poetry is only justified by success, 
and that Arnold was not always successful. 
His ear for rhythm was sometimes flagrantly at 
fault. Even in “ The Strayed Reveller,” with 
all its beauty, ; here are passages which are only 
poetry by virtue of width of margin. In some of 
the elegies, “ Haworth Churchyard ” and 
“ Heine’s Grave,” he falls into a kind of 
rhymeless sing-song, with occasional irregu¬ 
larities, which has an ugly but not inappropriate 
effect of spontaneous rhapsody, careless of art. 
114 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Sometimes, however, he was completely suc¬ 
cessful in his unorthodoxy. Then the effect is 
only less beautiful than that of the finest metres. 
“ Philomela ” is, perhaps, the most perfect 
example of this. 

PHILOMELA 

Hark ! ah, the Nightingale ! 

The tawny-throated ! 

Hark I from that moonlit cedar what a burst 1 
What triumph ! hark—what pain ! 

O Wanderer from a Grecian shore, 

Still, after many years, in distant lands, 

Still nourishing in thy bewilder’d brain 
That wild, unquench’d, deep-sunken, old-world pain— 
Say, will it never heal ? 

And can this fragrant lawn 
With its cool trees, and night, 

And the sweet, tranquil Thames, 

And moonshine, and the dew, 

To thy rack’d heart and brain 
Afford no balm ? 

Dost thou to-night behold 
Here, through the moonlight on this English grass, 
The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild ? 

Dost thou again peruse 
With hot cheeks and sear’d eyes 
The too clear web, and thy dumb Sister’s shame t 
Dost thou once more assay 
Thy flight, and feel come over thee, 

Poor Fugitive, the feathery change 

Once more, and once more seem to make resound 

With love and hate, triumph and agony, 

Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale ? 

US 


ARNOLD & HIS POETRY 

Listen, Eugenia— 

How thick the bursts come crowding through the 
leaves 1 

Again—thou hearest ! 

Eternal Passion 
Eternal Pain ! 

There could hardly be a fitter moment for 
taking our leave of Matthew Arnold than by 
the Thames he loved, with the voice of the 
nightingale in his ears and ours. 




BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The following list contains the titles of a few books 
and essays which may be specially recommended for 
the further study of Matthew Arnold and his poetry : 

“ The Letters of Matthew Arnold,” edited by G. W. E. 
Russell. 

Russell, G. W. E. : “ Matthew Arnold ” (Literary 
Lives). 

Paul, Herbert : “ Matthew Arnold ” (English Men of 
Letters). 

Saintsbury, George : il Matthew Arnold ” (Modern 
English Writers). 

Swinburne, Algernon Charles : “ Arnold’s New 

Poems ” (in “ Essays and Studies ”). 

Stephen, Sir Leslie : “ Matthew Arnold ” (in “ Studies 
of a Biographer ” ; vol. ii.). 

Hudson, William Henry : “ Matthew Arnold ” (in 
” Studies in Interpretation ”). 

Brooke, Stopford A. : “ Four Poets.” 



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